Ribband Fishes of the Genus G-ymnetrus. 7 



pressed his belief, " from a comparison of the various descrip- 

 tions and figures given by English observers and those given 

 by Ascanius, Brunnich, and Lindroth, that there is only a 

 single species yet found in the North Sea, and that this species 

 •comes as far south as the coast of Cornwall/' while, on the 

 other hand, Dr. Gunther, who is engaged in arranging the 

 fishes preserved in the British Museum, expresses his opinion 

 that five separate species have been found in the seas of Europe. 

 Without attempting to decide where doctors differ so widely, 

 I will add an account of a fish which may be of the same species, 

 and certainly is of the same genus, which ran itself on shore on 

 Hamilton Island, one of the Bermudan group, and of which, 

 besides the notes published in the Zoologist for 1860, I was 

 furnished with pen-and-ink sketches and measurements taken 

 at the time by an officer of the royal navy. The contradictions 

 which appear in the descriptions of this example by gentlemen 

 who cannot be suspected of a wish to deceive, will afford a 

 lesson how far we should implicitly accept the information con- 

 veyed by those who possess no knowledge in the science of 

 natural history. This unfortunate fish encountered the usual 

 fate of its race in suffering violence sufficient to destroy its 

 symmetry, even at the first ; the fears of its captors being 

 excited by the belief that they had met with a sample of the 

 far-famed serpent of the ocean, the existence of which has been 

 so strenuously denied. 



The effect may be imagined when we are informed that this 

 supposed reptile was attacked with large forks, which were 

 lying near at hand, for collecting sea-weed, by which it was 

 iC unfortunately much mauled" before it was secured. Its 

 length was sixteen feet seven inches, and the general propor- 

 tions much like those of Banks's oarfish, which the profile of 

 the head also much resembles. The crest, or plume on the 

 head is, in an American figure, given in Harper's Weekly Paper, 

 represented as separate from the more level dorsal, but in others 

 it is not so; and, says Captain Hawtaigne, in the Zoologist, 

 this crest was formed of a series of eight long thin spines of 

 a bright red colour, which followed each other at about the 

 interval of an inch : the longest ray, which was in the middle, 

 was two feet seven inches long, and flattened at the end like 

 the blade of an oar. Mr. Jones, however, who more closely 

 examined this fish, and better understood its nature, informs 

 us that the number of rays in this crest was " ten or eleven, 

 from two to three feet in extent." And my other account 

 represents them as exactly ten, the longest three feet in length, 

 and united by a membrane for more than half their length. In 

 the American figure the dorsal fin runs to near the extremity 

 of the body, of a bright scarlet colour, the pectoral much 



