A DOUBLE GRACE 121 



several years afterwards, it was found by the Investi- 

 gator off the Madras coast, it was a third time 

 described as new, and named Bathype^xis platy- 

 7'kynchus. But we afterwards recognised it as being 

 identical with the fishes previously described by the 

 Austrian and American professors. Seeing that it 

 is an undoubted ground-fish, its occurrence in three 

 regions so utterly remote as the Gulf of Mexico and 

 neighbouring coasts of the United States, the Bay of 

 Bengal, and the seas of Japan, requires some special 

 explanation. My own opinion is that the curious 

 range of this fish, which is by no means an isolated 

 instance, can only be explained by the assumption 

 of a continuous sea and shore connecting these points 

 at some former geological period. 



Another fish of this coast, remarkable in quite an- 

 other way, is the little rock-perch [Afinotts inermis). 

 The rock-perches {ScorpcEuidcE) almost all either creep 

 about on the sea-bottom or hide themselves in the 

 crannies of reefs, where, by reason of their mottled 

 lichen-like colouring, and by a profusion of wavy 

 cutaneous filaments with which their body and fins 

 are decked, they are difficult to distinguish from 

 shingle and rocks encrusted with seaweed and 

 zoophytes. Instead of frond-like filaments of its own, 

 MinoMS inermis is more or less invested with living 

 hydriform polyps : these always belong to one and 

 the same species (Stylactis minoi), and the fish has 



