Parxer.—On a Specimen of the Great Ribbon Fish. 285 
determination of the species. From information received from Mr. G. L. 
Sise, I have no doubt that a large fish cast ashore near Moeraki about two 
years ago belonged to the same genus, so that the specimen I am about to 
describe makes the fifth known to have been found in this country within a 
period of twenty-three years.* 
The species which has been most oe worked out is R. banksii, 
the subject of an excellent and well- illustrated paper by Hancock and 
Embleton.+ R. pacificus is figured and described at some length by von 
Haast and Powell. Besides these papers, brief accounts in the works of 
Ginther, Gray, Yan and Cuvier || include all the information at my 
disposal on the genus. There are, however, numerous references in- the 
“ Catalogue of Fishes” to the works of Bloch, Cuvier and Valenciennes, 
and other foreign ichthyologists. 
The published figures of Regalecus, like the descriptions, have in many 
cases been either very incorrectly drawn, or taken from damaged specimens. 
Nearly all are, however, valuable as showing more or less of such struc- 
tures as the anterior dorsal and the ventral rays, the precise relations of 
which in the various species are still extremely doubtful. As specimens 
may at any time be cast upon our shores, I give in pl. xxiv. outline copies of 
the head, and, in some cases, of the tail of all the figures I have been able 
to find: these will, 1 hope, furnish any local naturalist, who may be for- 
tunate enough to see an example of the great ribbon- fish, with some notion 
of the chief differences between the species and of the points to be kept in 
view iii making descriptions or drawings. For the same reason the ensuing 
description will be much fuller than would be necessary in the case of 
any but an extremely rare and fragile fish. 
The following is a list of all the figures to which I have found 
references, those pesto in the present paper being marked with an 
asterisk :— 
1. Regalecus gladius, Cuvier and Valenciennes, ** Hist. Nat. des Poissons.” 
Xt y „ Cuvier, * Règne Animal " (Poissons), pl. 69. 
8. „ — telum, Cuvier and Valenciennes, op. cit. 
4.* » banksii, Hancock and Embleton, loc. cit., pl. 1 and 2 (copied 
in Yarrell's ** British Fishes ”). 
* The so-called Regalecus jacksonensis of Ramsay (Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., 
vol. v., p. 631, pl. xx.) is certainly wrongly named; it is either a large cre or 
belongs to a new genus. 
+ Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 2 ser., iv., 1849, p. 1. 
1 Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. x., 1877, p. 246; and vol. xi., Mn . 269. 
|| Günther, op. cit.; J. E. Gray, “On the British Specimens of pas Proc. Zool. 
Soc., 1849, p. 80, and Ann. and Mag. N.H., 2 ser., vol. v., 1849, p. 501; Yarrell, “ British 
Fishes,” p. 300 ; Cuvier, “ Règne Animal” (Poissons), p. 148. 
