Fishes. 4299 



flesh, shot on Friday, the 11th instant, at Balbriggan, Dublin, by my friend, 

 H. A. Hamilton, Esq., who informs me it is not the first of the kind he has killed 

 there this winter. It measured 7f inches in length ; the expansion of the wings ll£ 

 inches ; and weighed 1 ounce 6 drachms. On dissection, it proved to be a male, and 

 though so much below the weight usually given, was very fat. This is, as far as I can 

 ascertain, the first occasion on which the least crake has been observed in Ireland. 

 Baillon's crake is only recorded as having occurred there once. — H. B. Tristram ; 

 Castle Eden, Durham, March 13, 1854. 



Note on a Luminous Fish* — As there are but very few fishes which have hitherto 

 been observed to emit a regular phosphoric light from determined parts of the body, 

 and as the published notices about this phenomenon are so scanty, I am induced 

 to submit the following instance which occurred to me in two specimens of Astronethes 

 Fieldii of Valenciennes, a fish in which nothing of the kind has hitherto been 

 remarked. Under other circumstances I should perhaps have hesitated to mention 

 the subject, because I had no opportunity of closely investigating the luminous 

 apparatus in the fresh fish. This little fish is extensively spread over a considerable 

 part of the Atlantic ocean, and appears to be common between the 23rd and 6th 

 degrees of North latitude. I have seen a number of specimens in the Zoological 

 Museum of our University, which had been caught between those parallels of latitude ; 

 and I have myself got several during my voyage to Brazil in the summer of 1850. 

 It was, however, after sunset only, that I discovered the fish in the drag net ; and, 

 without meaning to draw any general conclusion from this circumstance, which, after 

 all, may have been purely accidental, it seems proper to hint that it is only at that 

 time that the surface of the ocean begins to be crowded by vast swarms of Pteropoda 

 and the numerous Crustacea, and that possibly the fish searches for food among them, 

 following them into greater depth during the daytime. Most of my specimens were 

 entirely mutilated by the pressure of the sea against the net ; but in two instances I 

 was so fortunate as to catch the fish alive, when I saw that it sent forth two strong and 

 vivid greenish lights, which intermitted momentarily, and ceased altogether when the 

 fish died. As the two individuals only lived a few minutes after being taken out of 

 the net, and as the luminous appearance only showed itself distinctly in the dark, it 

 was not until I procured a second specimen, a number of days after the first was ob- 

 tained, that I ascertained with certainty, that the light radiated from a spot in the 

 forehead, a little before the eyes, flashing, as it were, from thence along the back as far 

 as the first dorsal fin ; all the rest of the body remained perfectly dark. On 

 examining the whitish speck in the specimen preserved in spirits, from whence the 

 light radiated, a cellular tissue is found underneath, or rather within the skin, consist- 

 ing of largish cells or meshes, filled with an apparently fatty substance. No doubt 



* Read by J. Reinhardt before the Association of Naturalists at Copenhagen, on 

 the 18th of February, 1853. Translated by Dr. Wallich, and obligingly communi- 

 cated by Mr. Spence. 



