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in a long slender filament. It lives in the deep recesses of the ocean, and 
is seldom seen to approach the shores, except during breeding time.” It is 
described also as a nocturnal fish, chiefly seeking its prey at that season. 
In the first volume of Magazine of Natural History, a singular fish 
of serpentiform shape is described, having been caught in Davis’ Straits, 
during one of the late expeditions in that quarter, and which was probably 
a variety of the chimaera. It was four and a-half feet long, with a purplish 
black granular skin, small fins, and slender tape-like tail, continued one foot 
eight and a-half inches beyond the extremity of the dorsal fin. The Sicilian 
species of stenoptyx, one of the salmonidae, besides the singularity of 
its form, is so exceedingly rare, that it was only met with twice during 
six years, by an inquiring ichthyologist, cast up on the shore opposite 
Reggio, both times after violent storms. Another species among the pikes 
is so rare, that but one figure of it existed, and Cuvier never saw it. 
Swainson met with it twice in five years. 
The large-eyed pomatome never scarcely leaves the deep sea ; at Nice 
only two specimens were met with in thirty years. Of the riband fish 
the same naturalist says, “ Its body is not thicker, except in the middle, 
than a sword; and being covered with richest silver and of great length, 
the undulating motion of these fish in the sea must be exceedingly beau¬ 
tiful and resplendent; but these, and all the wonders of the mighty deep, 
are almost hidden from the eye of man. These meteoric fishes appear to 
live in the greatest depths; and it is only at long intervals, and after a 
succession of tempests, that a solitary individual is cast up on the shore 
with its delicate body torn and mutilated.” One was killed off Plymouth, 
swimming rapidly on the surface, by an oar ; it was found to be infested 
by parasitical insects, which fact suggests one cause likely to drive the 
oceanic monsters to the surface. Other instances of a similar nature 
might easily be adduced; but with a short account of the solitary repre¬ 
sentative of a species of cete, the list will be closed. This whale was 
stranded at Havre in 1825, and is termed in the Naturalists’ Library the 
toothless whale of Havre, having no baleen (whalebone) and no teeth. 
It was delineated by the younger Cuvier, and its skeleton is deposited in 
the Paris museum. Its length was 15 feet, and its circumference ; 
it was a young animal; the head, which was distinguishable from the body 
by a marked neck , was 2^ feet long from extremity of the beak to the 
occiput; the body largest in the middle, became smaller at both extremities; 
the muzzle round, long, straight, resembled a bird’s beak ; the spiracle 2 
feet 3 inches from the extremity of the beak; the eye large, with upper 
eyelid; no trace of ear; the pectoral fins small in proportion, being only 
