A Deep'Sea Beauty 159 



incautiously up to one once, I found to my astonishment 

 that as I hfted it by the middle it broke into four 

 pieces as if it had been a bar of lightly frozen snow. 

 It is a fish much prized by New Zealand folk for the 

 table, but it is never caught except when it gets 

 stranded as I have described. It is almost if not quite 

 identical with Benthodesmus Atlanticus, found in the 

 stomach of a halibut caught on the Grand Bank of 

 Newfoundland, also in the West Indian Seas, South 

 Pacific, and coast of Japan. 



A fish of only quasi deep-sea habits, whose name, 

 bestowed by naturalists, boasts of eleven syllables, 

 Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps, was a quarter of a century 

 ago an object of deepest interest and discussion among 

 that hardy and most enterprising class, the American 

 deep-water fishermen. In 1879 it is recorded that 

 the ' Wm. V. Hutchings,' while setting trawl-lines 

 for cod on Nantucket shoals, caught several htmdred 

 specimens. It was entirely unlike anything ever 

 known in American waters, and as it was large, averag- 

 ing three feet long by ten inches high and four inches 

 through, it was thought and hoped that a discovery of 

 great commercial value had been made. And the 

 first thing done was to give it a handy name, without 

 regard to any fitness of application. So it was called 

 the Tile-fish, from the fourth syllable of its hybrid 

 Graeco-Latin name Lopholatilus. 



Most unusually. Dr. Goode, who describes it, goes 

 into something very hke a rapture over it, even to 

 the length of using superlatives. In addition to the 

 usual notes upon structure, etc., he says : ' The 

 colours are very beautiful, and in general appearance 

 when taken from the water it is one of the loveliest 

 fish we have ever seen, no exception being made in 

 favour of the brilliant parrot-fish or angel-fish of the 



