244 DEEP-SEA FISHES OF INDIAN OCEAN 



purple, with a broad splash of bright blue on the chin 

 and throat. 



Reference has already been made to the fact that, 

 on account of the absence of vegetation, the fishes of 

 the deep sea are all highly carnivorous. I shall here 

 mention a few of the Indian species that are so terribly 

 organised in tooth and jaw and maw, as to make them 

 the veritable scourges of the nether waters. 



Malacostezts (Fig. 42) and Photostomias atrox (Fig. 39) 

 display to perfection the nature of the mouth and teeth 

 of these deep-sea terrors. The mouth-cleft runs right 

 back to the enormous gill-slit, so that the face and upper 

 jaw are joined to the skull by a mere isthmus of bone : 

 the lower jaw is attached to the throat by nothing more 

 than a loose thread of flesh, so that it can be made to 

 gape like a trapdoor ; and the teeth are many and sharp, 

 and some of them are hinged fangs of enormous size. 

 The mouth, in short, in these two creatures is like a 

 great rat-gin spread in front of a chasm-like throat. 



What the stomach of some of these deep-sea con- 

 jurors can be stretched to hold is best exhibited by 

 Chiasmodus niger. This species is not shown here, be- 

 cause a figure of one, with its stomach distended by a 

 fish rather more than twice its own bulk which it has 

 swallowed, has already been published. The species 

 has several times been taken in the North Atlantic, 

 and once in the Bay of Bengal. Our specimen, which 

 was slightly over six inches long, and weighed perhaps 



