I.— FISHES. 

 By E. W. L. Holt and L. W. Byrne. 



1. Himantolophus Eheinhardti, Liitken. 

 Plates I. and II. 



The genus Himantolophus, Rheinhardt, may be characterized as 

 follows : 



CeratiidoB of stout and somewhat compressed form, with relatively 

 enormous heads and minute eyes. Spinous dorsal represented by a 

 single stout, club-like tentacle, folding backwards into a groove, and 

 bearing at its tip two short digitiform processes and numerous simple 

 or branching thong-like appendages. Soft dorsal and anal fins, short, 

 only separated by a short interval from the caudal. Epidermis thick 

 and rugose, with scattered bony plates, each with a roughly circular 

 base and short central spine ; similar but smaller plates thickly 

 scattered over the dorsal tentacle. 



This genus was originally founded by Rheinhardt (1837) for the 

 reception of a fish nearly 2 feet in length, found in 1833, cast up 

 upon the coast of Greenland after a heavy storm. This specimen had 

 been partially eaten by gulls and crows, and was half decomposed 

 before it came into the hands of Rheinhardt, who described it as 

 Himantolophus grosnlandicus. Only the club-like tentacle of this 

 specimen appears to have been preserved. 



A second specimen, 40 centimetres long, was picked up dead, 

 floating at the surface of the sea off the south coast of Greenland at 

 the end of 1876, and exhaustively described by Liitken (1878) as the 

 type of a new species, H. Rheinhardti. This species appeared to differ 



195 25—2 



