158 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



of any old fracture having at any time taken place, as the body 

 graduates gently from head to tail. It would seem, therefore, that 

 the supposition that the end of the tail " has been lost as a useless 

 appendage at a much earlier period of the life of the fish," which has 

 arisen from the circumstances that these fishes are so often found in 

 a truncated condition, is probably groundless, and their mutilation is 

 merely the result of accident. Moreover as the stomach has an 

 extraordinary ctecal prolongation which extends for many feet behind 

 the anus, it is evident that a loss of any considerable length of its tail 

 would probably be fatal to the fish. 



Colour and Markings. — In general appearance the fish presented, 

 on its arrival in Christchurch, numerous bright silvery patches, and 

 indications that this colour had covered the whole general surface of 

 the fish. These patches were eventually lost, and the fish assumed a 

 light greyish colour. Its crest, its dorsal, pectoral, and ventral fins 

 had faded to a dark salmon red colour. In some lights it could be 

 detected that dark spots and stripes had been dispersed over the 

 anterior part of the body, but they had almost faded out at the date 

 of examination. As to their number, form, and situation, I can, 

 therefore, speak with no certainty. On the sides of the body there 

 are five (5) well-defined black bars or ridges, running longitudinally. 

 These bands on examination proved to be composed of raised 

 tubercles, and they are distinctly separated by interspaces, which 

 in the fresh fish would be bright silvery stripes, quite free of 

 tubercles, as a sensitive finger passed along them discovers only the 

 very finest skin granulations. Above the uppermost of these bars, 

 and separated by a smooth interspace, a broader tuberculated band 

 extends up to the base of the dorsal fin. The tubercles in this band 

 are not so rough as on the lateral bars. Toward the tail and at a 

 few feet anterior to it these bars become lost, and exchange their 

 dark colour for a silvery white. The second, which is the most 

 prominent of all, runs furthest along the body and is finally lost at 

 two feet from the tail, where the tuberculation entirely ceases and the 

 rest of the body is soft and glistening. The first true bar and the 

 sub-dorsal fin-band pass forward, which is not the case Avith the 

 others, and terminate the front of the head above the anterior margin 

 of the eye. The lateral line cuts the second, third, and fourth true 

 bar (or ridge) a little posterior to the head margin of the operculum, 

 while the fifth follows the lateral line for a great part of its length. 

 The ventral surface is very roughly tuberculated, rougher than any 

 other part of the body, the tubercles presenting a suspicion of points. 

 Behind the anus the surface is very dark coloured, and was probably 

 black in the living fish. 



In its internal anatomy this oar-fish agreed so closely with that 

 already described as to require no further remark here. The liver, 

 however, must arrest the attention of anyone opening the body of 

 Regalecus by its pink colour, From this organ, when placed in spirit, 

 escaped a very large quantity of a deep salmon-coloured oil. In the 

 ovaria there were very minute ova, but, as in all the other specimens 

 hitherto examined, they were unimpregnated, as the winter is 

 evidently not their breeding season. 



The Regalecus has no teeth ; and I found in the oesophagus only a 



