139 
BLUNT-HEADED HALEBEAK. 
He^TiiTCi'mpJi'U/S obtusus, Zoologist, January, 1848. 
« “ List of British Animals in the 
British Museum, 1851. 
In tlie summer of the year 1841, I discovered, swimming in 
a pool of the rocks, where they had been left by the tide, 
several of the little fishes presently to be described, and of 
which we give a figure; and an account of these examples was 
read before the Linnsean Society in the following year. I have 
not seen any fishes like them since the time here mentioned; 
but in the year 1846, some of a similar kind were obtained 
from a pool in the Mount’s Bay, near Penzance by my late 
son Richard Q. Couch; and an account was given of them, with 
a figure of my own specimens, in the “Zoologist,” as above 
referred to. My impression at the time was, that they vere 
the young condition of some unknown species; but I have not 
been able with any probability to assign them to any kind of 
fish known to naturalists ; and the account is here given in the 
hope that future observation will throw some further light on 
the subject. 
The length of my own specimens was half an inch; the 
head proportionally large, wide across; body slender; eye large, 
and the snout in fi’ont of it short and abrupt; upper jaw arched; 
under jaw stout, projecting to a considerable extent, but in some 
specimens more than others; the point declining, and the sides 
not appearing to be formed of parallel rami of the jaw, but 
rather of a cartilaginous substance; vent placed posteriorly; body 
equal from the head to this point, but tapering thence to the 
tad; lateral line, so far as it could be distinguished, straight; 
dorsal and anal fins single, posterior, opposite each other; the 
latter beginning close behind the vent, and both reaching neaily 
