228 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



smelt than with the capelin, in which the dorsal is farther back, its first ray being equidistant 

 from the end of the snout and the extremity of the central caudal ray. Anal of one specimen 

 containing twenty-one rays. Gill-covers thin, papery, and flexible, lined with nacre. In drying, 

 the surfaces of the opercular-bones are marked with wrinkles parallel to their sides, as may be 

 observed in the smelt and capelin, but not so conspicuously. These wrinkles are most evident 

 on the square operculum. As the thin lining of the mouth and lips is mostly abraded, from 

 the putrescency of the specimens, the dentition can be only imperfectly ascertained from them. 

 In four specimens no teeth whatever can be discovered ; but in a fifth, a female full of mature 

 roe, the lower jaw is armed with a single series of very slender, curved teeth, rather more dis- 

 tant, and a little longer than those of the capelin. There is also a solitary tooth remaining on 

 the vomer of the same specimen, occupying the place of the exterior vomerine tooth in the 

 smelt, and nearly as large. Tongue conical as in the smelt, and not presenting an oval flat 

 surface surrounded with teeth like the capelin. In all the specimens the upper jaw was so 

 much injured that its structure could not be ascertained, but it is probable that the intermaxil- 

 laries, being small as in the capelin, were not distinguished from the labials by Dr. Gairdner, 

 in his examination of the recent fish. The rakers of the branchiae are long and slender as in 

 the smelts and capelin. The stomach resembles that of the capelin : the descending portion 

 ends in a pointed sac, and a short branch which it gives off in the middle terminates in the 

 pylorus. The intestine makes a bend, or rather twist, downwards at the pylorus, and runs 

 straight to the anus, its calibre gradually becoming less as it approaches the latter. There 

 are nine caeca, three of them rather shorter than the others close to the pylorus, the other six, 

 inserted in a single series down one side of the intestine, are each half an inch long. In three 

 specimens there are sixty-eight vertebrae in the spine, and in two sixty-nine. A male specimen, 

 with the melt half grown, showed no traces of villi, or altered scales, on the lateral-line, 

 though the skin was apparently entire in that place. Male capelins, destitute of the ridges 

 of elongated scales, are occasionally taken in Greenland. (See p. 187.) 



Dimensions. 

 Inches. Lines. Inches. Lines. 



Length from gullet to tip of descending part Length from pylorus to last caecum . . 6 



of stomach 1 5 „ of rest of gut .... 2 6 



„ of pyloric branch ... 3 R-] 



