120 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 



Among the lower animals, when the sexes differ 

 greatly in colour, it is almost always the male that is 

 the more splendid. But in Callioiiymtts carebares, 

 another of the dragonets of the Coromandel coast, 

 the female is more brightly coloured than the male, 

 a fact which can only be understood on the supposi- 

 tion that in this species the role of the sexes is re- 

 versed in courtship, and that it is the female who 

 makes the first advances. This reversal of parts, 

 accompanied by a reversal of characters both physical 

 and mental, is known to be the case with certain 

 exceptional birds, such as the painted snipe, the 

 button quail, and the cassowary, in all of which the 

 female is more showy and more pugnacious than the 

 male ; but it has never before, so far as I know, been 

 illustrated from the biology of fishes. 



Interesting, for quite another reason, is a fish of 

 the family Trachinidce (Weevers), known as Bembrops 

 cattdimaciila, which belongs to the fauna of the loo- 

 fathom line off the Madras coast. This species, which 

 is a ground - fish, was first discovered in Japanese 

 waters, and received its name at the hands of Professor 

 Steindachner, in 1877. Three years afterwards it 

 was again discovered, but was not recognised, on 

 quite the other side of the world, off the Atlantic 

 coast of the United States of America, and was 

 again described as a new species by the late Professor 

 Goode, under the name Hypsicometes gobioides. When, 



