236 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[Oct. ], 1865. 



The SArpiiiRiNE Gurnaed {Tngla hinindo). — 

 A speciineu of this fish, about ten inches long, 

 lived in the Hamburg aquarium all last summer 

 (1864), in a sea-water tank containing over a 

 thousand gallons. It was a fine and attractive 

 fish for exhibition, on account of its unusual form, 

 bright colours, enormous pectoral fins, and its open 

 daylight character, not hiding itself in a hole and 

 only making its appearance at night after visitors 

 have left, after the fashion of many animals in 

 zoological gardens, but boldly swimming about with 

 a gentle sailing motion like that of a swallow, as it 

 curves through the air with outspread wings. In- 

 deed, the pectorals of the fish were very similar to 

 the wings of the bird, though at other times their 

 fine blue colour, edged with brilliant yellowish- white, 

 and their broad "hovering" character, reminded 

 one of the wings of a great butterfly. The general 

 colour of the body of the fish was a rather cloudy 

 or dusky brick-dust red, very different to the red of 

 a gold-Csh. It had very large and intelligent-looking 

 eyes ; and that they were far-seeing eyes<l am con- 

 vinced of, as it used to perceive its food dropping 

 through the water at a remote corner of the tank, 

 ten or twelve feet away. This food was exclusively 

 living shrimps, and it would eat nothing else what- 

 ever, not even living prawns. As the double hand- 

 ful of shrimps went tumbling down towards the 

 bottom of the tank, the Gurnard would dash into 

 the midst of them, and would snap them up right 

 and left with much quickness, so long as they were 

 free above the sand with which the base of the tank 

 is covered to the depth of two or three inches. But 

 if the shrimps got into the sand, then the fish began 

 to use its curious " fin-rays," of which it possessed 

 six, three at the base of each pectoral fin. These 

 fin-rays were, in iz^i, fingers ; onlj^, as they were not 

 intended to grasp, but only to feel and to ^o^lch, they 

 were not articulated into joints, like the fingers of a 

 man or a monkey, but were composed of a series of 

 minute pieces of bone united by cartilage, forming 

 a stifi" wire-like structure, having an abrupt curve 

 downwards. Each fin-ray was made up of two of 

 these wires (so to speak) enclosed in a sheath con- 

 sisting of a continuation of the skin of the fish, and 

 tlie two wires were connected at their tips within 

 the sheath. The other ends of the two wires were 

 each attached to a separate muscle, and as the pair 

 of wires were free from each other except at tlieir 

 tips, and slid freely over each other in the sheath, it 

 followed that a very accurate fingering motion 

 (something like that of a pianoforte player's) could 

 be given by the alternate puUings of the muscles, 

 above or below. The extremities of the finger-rays 

 were smoothly rounded and very slightly knobbed ; 

 therefore, whenever a shrimp was buried out of 



sight in the sand, the Gurnard would disturb it by 

 feeling, poking, and prodding above it ; on which the 

 shrimp would fiy out of the sand (as shrimps will 

 do when alarmed), and would be caught and swal- 

 lowed instantly. In this manner the fish would con- 

 sume from twenty to thirty shrimps twice or three 

 times a week, and between the feeding days it would 

 employ itself in searching for stray shrimps all over 

 the bottom of the tank, until not one was left. At 

 length, in late autumn, the supply of shrimps from 

 Cuxhaven failed, and I could get none alive from 

 England or elsewhere, nor could I induce the Gur- 

 nard to eat anything else. I am sorry now that I 

 did not return it to the sea ; for its hunger became 

 distressing to behold. Its head looked unnaturally 

 big in contrast with its attenuated body ; its eyes 

 were sunk into deep pits, and its once magnificent 

 pectoral fins became split up into shabby rags, and 

 so, when on one Saturday afternoon in October it 

 turned over dead, I was not sorry to see it out of 

 its misery, and I then dissected it. I think this 

 was I he first specimen ever kept in an aquarium. — 

 W. Alford Lloycl, Zoological Gardens, Hamburg. 



Eels and Dew-worms. — I was removing some 

 eels from an eel-trap, where they had been caught 

 the night before. One of them had a substance, 

 the size of a goose tg%, about four inches down it, 

 which I concluded was a disease. On opening it, I 

 found it caused by a great number of dew-worm.s, 

 which it must have taken very shortly before enter- 

 ing the trap ; and to get them it must have been 

 out in the meadows during the night. It was very 

 showery weatlier at the time, and the river swollen, 

 but not over the banks. Dew-worms are generally 

 found in grass fields early in the mornings in wet 

 weather. — P. P. 



The Torpedo.— On the 20th July, I saw one of 

 these fish at Budleigh Saltertou, on the south coast 

 of Devon, which had been caught in a Brixham 

 trawl. Tiie lads who showed it called it an 

 " electrified ray ;" and said the fisherman who 

 caught it, though he only touched it with one finger, 

 received a severe shock, " his arm was left quivering 

 for ten minutes." When I saw it, it had been 

 exenterated, and weighed about 23 lb. Its coloiu" 

 was black and shining above (skin like shagreen) 

 and white below ; tail large and flapping ; spinal 

 column heavy, seemingly with a great plexus of 

 nerves attached to it ; fins cliiefly on the margin of 

 its cylindrical outline. Having no book of reference 

 with me, I could not at the time determine its 

 species ; from its colour, how^ever, I take it to be the 

 Torpedo nohiliana, of Yarrell, rather tiian the other 

 which is given as a British species, the Torpedo 

 marmorata, or " old British Torpedo." — Rev. M. G. 

 Watkins, Barnoldby-le-Beck, Grimsby. 



