ray’s sea-bream. 
79 
above the eyes. The pectoral and ventral tins yel- 
lowish. 
In the Mediterranean, according to Risso", Ray’s 
Bream attains a length of 70 cm. and a weight of 6 
kgrm. The specimen taken by Schagerstrom on the 
25th of November, 1825, on Hildesborg shore near 
Landskrona “after a, stormy night with a strong N. W. 
wind,” was 607 mm. long (including the lobes of the 
caudal tin) and 2'87 kgrm. in weight. Four other spe- 
cimens are recorded by Nilsson as taken on the west 
coast of Sweden from Scania to Bohuslan, and one of 
them, which was cast up after a N. W. storm on the 
16th of December, 1843, in the neighbourhood of TjorrF, 
is now in the Royal Museum and was the original of 
v. Wright’s drawing. Its length is 472 mm. to the 
end of the middle caudal rays. There is no record 
as yet of its capture in Norway; but in Denmark, 
according to Krgyer, it has been cast ashore after 
stormy weather three times in Zealand, and according 
to Winther c it has once (1876) been caught off the 
Skaw. In the Museum of Greifswald' 7 there is said to 
be a specimen from the Baltic. However, it really 
belongs to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic outside 
it. It is said to have been found once off Newfound- 
land ", and if our list of synonyms be correct, it has 
an equally wide range in the Pacific. 
In the Mediterranean Ray’s Sea-Bream ranks as 
a delicacy, but as it is really an inhabitant of the 
depths of the sea, up to 900 metres — “the large 
eyes and the high development of the dermal sensory 
organs,” says Winther, “make it admirably suited for 
a life in the ocean-depths” — no constant method of 
fishing for it can be adopted. Only during summer 
does it come up in small bodies nearer the surface, pro- 
bably in order to spawn, and it is then caught in 
fairly large numbers on long-lines at certain spots, 
near Genoa for example. The fishermen also say, ac- 
cording to Lunei/, that it is most often taken at a 
depth of from 400 to 500 metres during the sinking 
or raising of the long-line. Thus it does not seem by 
any means to be a constant inhabitant of the bottom 
of the sea. 
The specimens met with in Scandinavia have most 
often been found cast up on shore after storm, a fact 
to which Lutken 17 has called special attention. In or- 
der to explain why these specimens have come so near 
the surface and so far away from their true home in 
the depths that they could feel the effects of storm, 
the assumption has been made that they were troubled 
by parasitic worms — it is known that Ray’s Bream 
suffers from them greatly, especially during summer — 
and that it was this disease that drove them away 
from their usual life and home. 
a Eur. Mer vol. Ill, p. 454. 
b Eksteom, 'Gbgs Vet. Vitt. Samh. Handl. 1850. p. 37. 
c Naturh. Tidskr., 1. c. 
d Mobius and Heincke, Fische cler Ostsee, p. 41. 
e Brown-Goode: The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of United States , Sect. I (Wash. 1884), p. 335, where this species is also 
said to have been found in Bermuda. 
/ 1. c., p. 177. 
9 1. c., p. 492. 
