PLATE LX VI. 
species common to Europe, and South Carolina. “ As yet,” observes 
Mr. Pennant, “ only a single specimen has been discovered in our 
seas; taken at Penzance in Cornwall.” To this we may add another 
instance within our more immediate knowledge, .of its being captured 
in the British seas : about the year 1779, some short time after the 
publication of the British Zoology, a very fine fish of this sort was 
caught on the Cornish coast, and communicated to Mr. George 
Humphrey, of Savillc House, Leicester Square. This specimen was 
afterwards obtained by Mr. John Hunter, Surgeon, in whose 
Museum the fish, very finely preserved in spirits, remains at 
this time*. It is about eighteen inches in length, and when first 
taken was remarkable for the uncommon brilliancy of its colours ac- 
cording to the testimony of those who saw it at that time : the back 
was of the finest ultramarine blue imaginable, the whole under sur- 
face of a resplendent silver, and the belly beset with spines of a rich 
carmine colour, which seemed to derive still greater beauty from the 
admirable contrast of the silvery surface upon which they were dis- 
posed. We are in possession of a third specimen that has been caught 
in the European seas, that exactly corresponds with the above, but we 
have not hitherto been so fortunate as to obtain a British specimen. 
After perusing the description which Mr. Pennant leaves us of 
this fish, we must really confess our astonishment, that any ichthyolo- 
gist could possibly remain in doubt as to the identity of the species 
that author means by his Globe Diodon. Mr. Pennant, it is true, 
considers his fish as the Tetrodon hevigfttus of Linnaeus, in which 
respect he is mistaken, but in other particulars his description of the 
* This fish has the abdomen cut open to shew the structure of the internal organs, by 
means of which the creature has the power of inflating tire external skin of the abdome# 
at pleasure, like a bladder, to a prodigious size. 
