1100 
SCANDINAVIAN FISHES. 
to the extreme end of the margin of the pectoral fin. 
Whether more Sting-Rays have been found on the coast 
of Scandinavia, we are ignorant; but Retzius included 
the species in his edition of Linnaeus’s Fauna Suecica; 
and the Museum of Drottningholm contained a speci- 
men about 6 dm. long (now preserved in the Royal 
Fig. 314. Tryqon pastinaca, $, J / 4 nat. size; 
Museum, but with the tail broken off short), which 
had certainly been in Linnaeus’s hands, but is probably 
of foreign origin, as he did not personally recognise 
the species as Swedish. The last-mentioned specimen 
is represented in the appended figure. 
, caudal spine, nat. size. From the Museum Adolphi Friderici. 
Fam. RAJIDiE. 
Tail depressed, with dermal edge on the sides , flat underneath , convex on the top , and furnished with tivo dorsal 
fins, tvith or without caudal fin. The pectoral fins extend forward to the snout or even in front of the rostral 
cartilage. Where electric organs are present, they lie on the sides of the tail. No spear-like spine on the tail. 
As we have remarked above, these fishes, the fa- 
mily of the true Rays, in spite of the singular deve- 
lopment of the pectoral fins, deviate less than the 
preceding families from the form of body typical of 
the Sharks. A distinct expression of this is given by 
the arrangement of the nostrils and the nasal valvule. 
Each nostril is indeed continued here too by a groove 
to the corner of the mouth; but the nostrils are farther 
apart, and the nasal valvule coalesces throughout the 
greater part of its inner surface with the bottom of 
the snout, so that in many cases only its posterior 
lateral corners form free dermal flaps. 
The stronger flattening of the body, especially of 
the head, imparts to the eyes, as we have mentioned 
above, a more horizontal position; but they are pro- 
tected above by an expansion of the frontal skin, and 
to mitigate the excessive brilliancy of the light, the 
upper margin of the iris is prolongated in most of the 
species into finger-shaped processes partly covering the 
pupil. 
The family as a whole — it is dispersed round the 
globe from the tropical to the frigid zones — is about 
as varied in form as the preceding one, but in our seas 
more so; and its members are often difficult to distin- 
