Ribband Fishes of the Genus Gymnetrus. 3 



without actually joining it to the body ; and a deficiency also 

 occurs at the head, where the crest or plume is represented by 

 two long rays only that are bent forward, and each one tipped 

 with a membranous expansion not much unlike the termination 

 of a peacock's feather, but of a red colour, as are all the fins. 

 The ventral fins are formed, each of a single ray, with its fan- 

 like expansion, and reaching to about the middle of the body. 

 The acknowledged imperfection of portions of this fish appears 

 to have been deemed a sufficient warrant for the exercise of the 

 imagination in persons who had not seen the original, but who 

 undertook to form a likeness according to what they siipposed 

 it ought to be. Such must have been the case as regards a 

 figure in the possession of the late William Bashleigh, Esq., 

 F.R.S., etc., by whom I was permitted to take a copy of it; 

 and which requires to be particularly noticed, as it was that 

 from which Mr. Yarrell's figure was derived in the first and 

 second edition of his History of British Fishes. In this case, 

 the two rays which naturally rise from the forehead, and are so 

 represented in Mr. Chirgwin' s figure, are transferred to the 

 throat, and thus the ventral fins are represented with double 

 their usual number of rays, a mistake which is rectified in the 

 last edition of Mr. YarrelFs work. 



That Mr. Chirgwin, as above referred to, was in error when 

 he supposed that no other drawing but his own was taken from 

 the actual specimen at Newlyn appears from the fact that there 

 exists in the library of the British Museum, bound up in a quarto 

 copy of Pennant's work on the Natural History England, for- 

 merly in the possession of Sir Joseph Banks, a figure of this 

 same fish, but which differs in several particulars from Mr. 

 Chirgwur's drawing. In this the jaws are reduced to their 

 proper position, but the rays on the top of the head are without 

 their membranous expansion, and the ventral fins are broken 

 short, which defects appear to be sufficient proofs that the 

 figures in Pennant's volume were really copied from nature, 

 but somewhat later than that of Mr. Chirgwin. The remarkable 

 liability to injury in this fish, from rough handling, will explain 

 the difference thus observed. Block's great work on fishes con- 

 tains a likeness of what that author supposed to have been this 

 Cornish fish, but bis description of it appears to be scarcely 

 intelligible. Some account of it, with a figure, was sent to him 

 by Mr. John Hawkins, who had travelled on the Continent as a 

 naturalist, but chiefly in pursuit of botany ; but this gentleman 

 appears to have sent also a small specimen of what both of them 

 supposed to be the same species, but which had been taken in the 

 East Indies, and what the Prussian naturalist is able to say on 

 the subject is derived from a combination of these distinct and 

 even diverse materials, with some confusion perhaps arising 



