PLATE LXXVI. 



Length twelve inches, form somewhat ovate, moderately com- 

 pressed, brown ; the whole surface minutely papillose ; smooth to 

 the touch, but slightly rough in an inverse direction. The head is 

 deeply sloping ; the eye placed high, and immediately over it a small 

 membraneous fin, connected anteriorly to a strong serrated spine. 

 The second dorsal fin consists of thirty-six rays ; the pectoral fin 

 contains fifteen rays, anal thirty-one rays, and the tail fifteen rays. 

 All the rays of the tail are strong and ramose, and the ten middlemost 

 are alternately prominent, exhibiting five carinated rays on each side 

 the tail ; for each of those rays are carinated on one side and flat on 

 the other, and are so disposed that the flat side of each lies half con- 

 cealed between the prominent surface of the two lateral rays. 



There is some reason to apprehend that this fish may be closely 

 allied to the granulated Balistes of Surgeon White's voyage, or may 

 possibly be the same ; the fish described however by Mr. White was 

 no more than four inches long, and of a paler colour ; he speaks also 

 of a second strong ray in the first dorsal fin, which does not appear 

 in our specimen, and tlie diiference in the number of the rays in the 

 fins is material. He is silent as to their number, and the figure 

 possibly may be faulty, artists generally having little conception of 

 that minute degree of accuracy which is so essentially requisite in 

 drawings of this nature : but if we can indeed rely upon the characters 

 as expressed in the figure, we should at once pronounce it to be of 

 another species. The connecting membrane in the first dorsal fin is 

 wholly wanting, and only the rudiment of a greater spine apparent, 

 and the second certainly ambiguous. The second dorsal fin has no 

 more than twenty-two rays, the tail seven, anal fin seventeen rays, 

 and pectoral six. In the fish before us they nearly twice exceed 



