134 
OPAH. 
I 
not tlien any known reference to a description of it, a desig- 
nation was adopted which it was said by an African prince to 
bear in his own country, — where, however, it is not certain it 
was ever seen, — and thenceforward it has been called by the 
name of Opah. 
I have received information of an example that was obtained 
in the west of Cornwall, in the early part of the summer of 
1835, which is so far remarkable that other specimens of this 
rare fish were taken in other places about the same date. One 
has been obtained in Devonshire also; but the larger number 
of British specimens have been taken in the north. One of 
these was secured in August, 1835, in the bay of Landadu, 
near Conway; another at Queensferry in the same year; and 
again another on the coast of Norfolk, in July, 1839. Mr. 
Norman, in the “Zoologist,” mentions an individual taken oflT 
riamborough Head in February, 1849. And we think it 
material to the history of a fish, the habits of which are so 
little known, to preserve those dates, as a contribution toward 
an explanation of the causes which may entice or drive it 
from its native depths. This species, in common with the 
Bergylt, affords an exception to a general remark — that those 
natives of the seas are the most splendidly adorned which 
inhabit the warmer and brighter regions of the globe, where 
the ocean is more shallow, and themselves under the influence 
of a tropical climate. The reverse of this obtains in the fishes 
we have mentioned; and it is probable that even the line of 
the fisherman has never elsewhere reached to so vast a depth 
as when it plunges to the regions in which they dwell. It is 
from the united evidence of Scandinavian and British observers 
that we class the Opah as an inhabitant of the deeper waters 
of the North Sea, from which it does not often emerge, and 
where its range appears to be a limited one, for it has not 
been seen off the coast of Greenland, nor anywhere eastward 
of the North Cape. 
Individuals of this species have been found to measure in 
length from three to five feet; and an example of the former 
was sixteen inches in depth, with the head, from the snout 
backward ten inches. The jaws are equal, or perhaps the 
lower a little the longest, without teeth. Eye large. The slope 
is continued from the beginning of the dorsal fin to the upper 
