CURIOSITIES OF COLOUR 243 



Neobythites macrops, which ranges from 188-405 fathoms, 

 is mottled ; and Neobythites steatiticus, a wanderer be- 

 tween 107 and 250 fathoms, is streaked like a fish cut 

 in soapstone, besides having an ocellus and some stripes 

 in its fins. In Dicrolene nigricatida, which is found 

 between 188 and 284 fathoms, the body is brown, the 

 after half of the tail is black, and the tail fin is milk- 

 white. Finally there are no less than five kinds of 

 soles and flounders, all lying between 100 and 400 

 fathoms, in these seas, in which the body is marked 

 either with dark cross-bands or large smoky blotches. 



I have already referred to the Investigator fishes, 

 also dwellers in the upper parts of the abyssal slope, 

 whose colour is either uniform rosy red, or red more 

 or less mixed or alternated with some shade of yellow ; 

 these include several perch-like fishes and Scorpsenoids, 

 a dory, several fishing-frogs and gurnards, and one kind 

 of codfish. 



The only really splendid fishes of the deep sea with 

 which I have a first-hand acquaintance, are a Scopeloid 

 [Neoscopelus) found here in 188-405 fathoms, and a 

 Berycoid (Hoplostetlms) ; but whether their rainbow hues 

 are natural, or are only, like those of the mackerel, the 

 result of a last expiring ecstasy, it is impossible to say. 

 In Neoscopehts the whole body is one dazzling sheen of 

 purple and silver and burnished gold, amid which is a 

 sparkling constellation of luminous organs. Hoplostethus 

 is one glorious blaze of sunset colours, from pink to 



