TRANSACTIONS 



OF THE 



Akt. I. — Orthagoriscus Mola. Couch. Takex Halifax 

 Harbor, Oct. 1873. By J. Bernard Gilpin, Esq., 

 M. D., M. R. C. S. 



{Read November 9, 1873.) 



This singular oceanic fish measured, extreme length five feet 

 six inches; breadth, halfway between tip of nose and dorsal fin, 

 three feet one inch ; eye, diameter three inches, and eight inches 

 from tip of nose ; dorsal fin two feet two inches in height ; anal 

 one foot eleven inches. Color, upper part dorsal anal and candal 

 fins and back, bluish black. Lower parts of cheeks, chin and belly 

 soiled white. The soil being caused by small black points on tlie 

 white. In reflected lights the whole white parts had a bright 

 pearly lustre. In form orbicular, and much compressed, perhaps 

 (though not measured) not more than ten inches in its thickest 

 part. The back and belly both with a sharp carinated edge. Two 

 roundish ridges commencing above and below the eye lost them- 

 selves about the middle of the body. The upper forming a kind of 

 eye-brow, the latter making a pouting lip and cheek. The mouth 

 was roundish, small with a feeble look, and an interrupted band of 

 enamel served for teeth to both jaws. The nostrils were two 

 lunated slits on each side of what resembled nasal bones rather than 

 intermaxilliaries, and which were moveable. The iris was in a 

 sunken orbit of three inches in diametre in death, (though no 

 doubt in life protuding) it is silvery and half cohered by a fattish 

 membrana nictitans. The gill was also a sunken eliptic orifice 

 below vvhich a dark purple spongy substance showed. The pectoral 

 fin was immediately behind the gill, orbicular small, having several 

 radiating ridges on its substance, nearly immovable and lodged in' 

 a hollow of the body. The skin was covered with large granula- 

 tions or small tubercles, pearly in a reflected light. There was no 



