1S2 
GREATER FLYING FISH. 
appear that they are at any time caught with a hook; and 
their food is supposed to be the very small molluscous and 
crustacean animals which are known to abound at times in every 
part ot the ocean. 
I have possessed an example which measured twenty inches 
and a half in length, but that which furnishes the description 
is only sixteen inches, and as Eondeletius remarks, excluding 
the fins, the general form bears a near resemblance to that 
of the Grey Mullet The head wide, fiattened between the 
eyes, which are large; the mouth wide across, but the gape 
small; lower jaw beyond the upper, teeth in both scarcely 
perceptible; nostrils close before the eye. The body round 
and wide across the back, compressed at the sides, more com- 
pressed and slender towards the tail. Scales rather large, with 
a separately marked line of them passing low down on the 
sides from beneath the root of the pectoral fin, to the root 
of each ventral. These do not form the lateral line, which, 
however, is only faintly marked. The first plate of the gill- 
cover passes backward below in a blunt angle. Pectoral fins 
wide, high on the body in proportion to other abdominal fishes, 
and in the example described nine inches in length, with fifteen 
rays, which are thin and branched, but broad, and the thin 
edge in contact with the membrane; the membrane also thin, 
and I am informed that when newly from the water it is 
transparent. These fin-rays lengthen to the fourth. Ventral 
fins long and wide, with six rays, the first short and wide, and 
when stretched back it reaches so far as to cover the beginning 
of the anal, in which particular, among others, this species is well 
distinguished from the Lesser Flying Fish, (B. volitans,) in 
which these fins are comparatively small, as also placed more 
forward on the body; although not so much so as is generally 
represented in published figures. The third and fourth rays of 
these fins are the longest, and they admit of great expansion. 
Dorsal fin far on the hind part of the body, high at first, then 
narrower, and the last rays lengthened. The anal begins opposite 
half the length of the dorsal, of the same shape, and they end 
opposite each other; the rays of both simple. The tail forked, 
lower lobe longest. Colour bluish grey, or dark on the back’ 
pale blue on the sides, white below. 
The structure of the organs of flight in these fishes, and 
