210 Mr. A. Alcock on the Bathybial Fishes 
The intestine is convoluted ; the anal papilla is very 
slender, and in the male it is very much longer than it is in 
the female. Vertebra 8/13. 
Colours in life The upper half of the headjand body and 
all the fins range from sepia-grey to blotchy black, and the 
ventral surface of the body is transparent and colourless ; the 
first dorsal fin has in the male a central black patch, and in 
the female a central, black, white-edged ocellus. 
Total length 5 inches. 
Hab. Vide Station 96. About seventy specimens. 
Anacanthini. 
Family Ophidiidae. 
Neobythites, Goode & Bean. 
13. Neobythites pterotus, sp. n. 
With long feathery pectoral fins which reach to the origin 
of the anal fin. 
B. 7-8. D. circa 120. A. circa 95. V. 2. P. 18. C. 10. 
Snout pointed ; head and body compressed ; tail long and 
tapering, ending in a long narrow caudal fin, which is free 
except at its extreme base. 
Head with its mucous cavities well developed ; its length 
is about f that of the entire trunk, or about ^ of the total 
without the caudal ; its maximum height behind the occiput is 
more than § of its length, or|f of the maximum body-height ; 
its breadth is nearly half its length ; there is a strong acute 
spine in the upper half of the operculum, but no other arma- 
ture. Snout pointed, overhanging the mouth; its length, 
less than its breadth, is 3f in the length of the head, or twice 
the major diameter of the eye, which is deeply set beneath 
the skin without any orbital fold ; interocular space convex, 
2i times the diameter of the eye ; nostrils very large, one near 
the tip of the snout, the other at the angle of the eye. Cleft 
of mouth wide, oblique ; maxilla more than half as long as 
the head, expanded and scaly at its posterior end ; in repose 
the lower jaw is completely included within the upper; villi- 
form teeth in narrow bands in jaws, in a V-shaped patch on 
the vomer, in broad elliptical bands on the palatines ; entire 
oro-branchial cavity intense black. 
Gill-cleft very wide, the membranes being united only quite 
anteriorly ; branchiostegals (in the one specimen obtained) 
seven on the right side, eight on the left ; gill-laminae very 
