[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 15th September, 1874.]

As far as I am aware no specimen of the Leptocephalidœ, Bonaparte, a curious family of anguilliform fishes, called glass-eels by the sailors, and distinguished by a low form of organisation, has yet been noticed as having been obtained on the coasts of New Zealand.

These curious small fishes, which are more or less transparent, sometimes as thin as paper, possess only a cartilaginous vertebral column, and seem to be inhabitants of the high seas only.

A specimen presented by Mr. John Grigg, of Long Beach station, to the Canterbury Museum, which was picked up on the Ninety-mile beach during the strong north-east storm towards the latter part of the month of August, proved on examination to agree with Leptocephalus longirostris, of Kaup, which was first obtained at Messina, in the Mediterranean. The following specific characteristics are given by Dr. Günther in the Catalogue of Fishes in the British Museum, Vol. VIII., p. 141:—Body much compressed, elevated and short, the upper and lower profiles abruptly rising behind the head; head low, rather long; eye of moderate size; tongue not free in front; jaws toothed; muscular striæ vertical.

In the Catalogue of Apodal Fish, by the late Professor J. Kaup, the species in question is figured on Plate XVIII., Nos. 14 and 14a.

Total length of our specimen, 8.25 inches; greatest depth, .85 inch; length of head, .27 inch.

The remarkably transparent head—well preserved in our specimen, and very small when compared to the length and height of the body—gains, however, prominence by the large silvery eye, by which that transparency becomes still more conspicuous.