93 
LONG-NOSED SKATE 
llaie miiseau poinhi, Maia acus, Btsso. 
Raia murmnata, Coniisl) Fauna, p. 26, but iioi th- 
references. 
“ “ Couch’s MS. in the Library of the 
Linnajan Society. 
“ “ Yarrell; Br. Fishes, vol. ii, p. 550. 
nms. Gray; Catalogue of Br. Museum, p. 140. 
It is a question whether this is not 
the Raia oxyrhjnchus 'major of 
Willoughby, p. 71. 
Tins species was r.ot known to the older writers on natural 
history, but in Risso’s “Icthyologie de Nice,” and in Dr. J. E. 
Gray’s “Catalogue of the Fishes in the British Museum,” I 
find a reference to Lacepede, who called it by the names 
quoted from Risso. Still I do not find any mention of it in 
mv copy of Lacepede’s “History of Fishes,” dated in the 
sixth year of the republic. 
This species is less frequently taken than the Common 
Skate, and not usually in the winter. The earliest I have 
met with have been caught in April; and as also examples 
of small size do not fall into the hands of fishermen, we may 
suppose that their usual haunts are, with their parents, in 
deep water. Fishermen report that when this fish has swallowed 
the hook, it becomes more violent in its efforts to free itself 
than the other species of this family. No further use is made 
of it than to extract oil from its liver. 
The length of an example of the ordinal y size Avas four 
feet seven inches, of which the tail measured sixteen inches; 
the greatest breadth three feet and about an inch; and from 
the snout to the mouth fourteen inches, the prominency of 
the snout extending thus to a much greater length than is 
found in any other of the British species of this family, 
