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Mr. M'Coy on some rare Fish 



The beautiful rosy tint of the dorsal fins first attracted my 

 attention. This fish has not, I believe, been discovered in 

 the British seas before ; I have only seen these two speci- 

 mens, one of which is in the Museum of the Royal Dublin 

 Society, and the other in my own collection. The species is 

 known to ichthyologists only by the descriptions of Cuvier 

 and Valenciennes, who had an opportunity of seeing but one 

 specimen brought by M. Bibron from Sicily, and preserved 

 in spirits, when it had lost some of its characteristics, parti- 

 cularly the pink colour of the dorsal fins ; a description, there- 

 fore, from living specimens may not be unacceptable, parti- 

 cularly to the British naturalist, to whose Fauna it is now 

 added. 



Length 2 inches and 1 line ; depth at base of first dorsal 4 lines : 

 head depressed; snout very short, tumid, convex; lower jaw longer 

 than the upper : eyes very large, approximate ; a sulcus or groove 

 runs from between the eyes to the base of the first dorsal ; cheeks 

 tumid ; eyes within a third of their diameter apart; from the ante- 

 rior edge of the orbit to the tip of the upper jaw, less than the dia- 

 meter of the eye ; first dorsal with the second ray longest, the others 

 gradually decreasing. 



D. 6. 10; P. 19; A. 10; C. 15 ; V. 10. 



The head is one-fourth the entire length ; the depth at the base of 

 the pectorals one-sixth the entire length ; width at base of the pec- 

 torals one-sixth the entire length, caudal fin included ; the ventral 

 fin reaches as far as the posterior margin of the vent ; the pectorals 

 scarcely further. Colour (in spirits), body pale fulvous yellow, re- 

 ticulated with black lines, something paler below : fins white, the 

 anal and ventral in the adult fish being slightly margined with dusky ; 

 the pectoral, ventral, anal and caudal fins without spots ; the two 

 dorsals, when the fish was alive, were of a very beautiful rose colour ; 

 these two fins are thickly marked with large black spots, placed, for 

 the most part, between the rays. On the anterior dorsal there is a 

 series of six very large black spots extending from the posterior 

 angle to about the middle of the anterior ray ; this row is conse- 

 quently midway between the body and the margin of the fins ; be- 

 neath these there is another series of four smaller black spots com- 

 municating at the anterior ray, and between the longest set and the 

 margin of the fin there are a few straggling black spots inferior in 

 size to those of the first series ; beneath these there is, anteriorly, a 

 set of five or six smaller black spots ; above each of the spots in the 

 principal row is a small black dot. The second dorsal has nearly the 

 same arrangement of the spots, but has them in greater number. 



Crenilabrus Cornubicus. Rare in Dublin bay. 

 Merlangus virens. Rare in Dublin bay. 

 Motella tricirrata. Very common in Ronndstone bay, Con- 

 nemara. 



