Parker. — On a Torpedo recently caught near Dunedin. 281 



jaws, very oblique, the points being turned outwards ; several strong den- 

 ticulations on each side of the principal point. No membrana nictitans. 

 Spiracles small ; gill-openings of moderate width. 

 " Echinorhinus spmosus. 

 " Spiracles behind the eye, behind the vertical from the angle of the 

 mouth. Teeth ||E^- Dorsal fins close together. Each tubercle with a 

 small spine in the centre. Brownish-violet, with or without dark spots." 



Art. XIX. — On a Torpedo (T. fusca, ?w. sp.) recently caught near Dunedin. 

 By T. Jeffery Parker, B. Sc. Lond., Professor of Biology in the 

 University of Otago. 



[Read before the Otago Institute, 7th May, 1883.] 

 Plate XXII. 

 The specimen upon which the following description is founded was caught 

 at Purakanui, Otago, towards the end of last year. As far as I know it is 

 only the second example of the genus which has been recorded in New 

 Zealand,* the other having been caught at Napier, in 1868, by Captain 

 Fairchild, and named by Professor Huttonf Torpedo fairchildi. 



The present specimen agrees in most respects with T. hebetans, \ of 

 which I should be disposed to consider it a variety, but for the fact that 

 it differs from that species in at least one character considered by GHinther 

 to be of specific importance. I therefore propose to name it provisionally 

 T. fusca. 



The species of Torpedo are divided by Griinther into two groups, contain- 

 ing respectively those with fringed and those with unfringed spiracles. My 

 specimen belongs to the latter subdivision, in which only two species, T. 

 hebetans, and T. narce, are included in the " Catalogue of Fishes." A query 

 is, however, placed against T. emarginata of McCoy, || indicating that its 

 position as a synonym of T. hebetans is doubtful. Hutton's T. fairchildi has 

 also unfringed spiracles, and it is apparently the only new species of Torpedo 

 which has been recorded since the publication of the " Catalogue of Fishes." 



* Since this paper was written, two specimens of Torpedo have been caught in Napier 

 Harbour, but the description of them (N.Z. Journ. of Sci., July, 1883) is not sufficiently 

 exact to allow of their identification. 



t Hutton and Hector, Catalogue of N.Z. Fishes, 1872. 



\ Gunther, Catalogue of Fishes, viii., p. 449. 



[| Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 1841. 



