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Further Notes on the Occurrence of Regalecus on the Taranaki Coast.
I find that an amendment must be made to my former notes on the occurrence of Regalecus on the New Zealand coasts, inasmuch as I omitted mention of the specimen described by H. O. Forbes; Esq., F.Z.S. (vol. xxiv. of the Transactions, p. 192), which was caught at Okain's Bay, Banks Peninsula, Canterbury, on the 26th May, 1891. This should stand as tenth on the list, making the Moturoa specimen the eleventh. The Okain's Bay fish, from its expressedly dried condition as defined by the description thereof, must have lost much of the prominence of the smaller tubercles covering the spaces between the ridges of the larger sized. All are purely epidermal, and decrease much in size and height on the sides of the fish the nearer they approach the caudal extremity, almost disappearing as the skin dries. The blackness of the so-called longitudinal bars and the dark colour along the post-anal ventral edge was also, I think, due to such condition.
The five specimens of Regalecus now more carefully described and measured allows contrast of the ratios as between head-length and body-depth with that of the pre-anal division as proposed by me. Following the example set by Professor Parker and Mr. Forbes for further ready re-
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ference in connection with any future specimens, I repeat their tabulations of measurements, adding thereto the proportion for the above bases—from their data—for their fish, placing my equivalents for comparison in a further column. As you will note, the results are remarkably close in some of them, identical in others.
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| — | New Brighton (South Island). | Moeraki (South Island). | Otago Harbour (South Island). | Okain's Bay (South Island). | Moturoa (North Island). | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ft. | in. | Ft. | in. | Ft. | in. | Ft. | in. | Ft. | in. | ||
| Total length | 12 | 5 | 12 | 6 | 17 | 0 | 18 | 10 | 11 | 1·5 | |
| 11 | 0 | ||||||||||
| Greatest height of body | 0 | 13·5 | 0 | 15·25 | 0 | 12·1 | 0 | 14·5 | 0 | 9·5 | |
| Length of head (jaws retracted) | 0 | 7·75 | 0 | 9·0 | 0 | 9·5 | 0 | 8·125 | 0 | 6·25 | |
| Distance between snout and anus | 4 | 11 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 9·5 | 5 | 4·125 | 3 | 11·5 | |
| Proportion of height to length | 1::11 | 1::10 | 1::11 | 1::15·6 | 1::14 | ||||||
| Proportion of length of head to total length | 1::19 | 1::17 | 1::14 | 1::27·35 | 1::21 | ||||||
| Proportion of pre-anal region to total length | 1::2·5 | 1::2·27 | 1::2·29 | 1::3·36 | 1::2·8 | ||||||
| Proportion of head to pre-anal region | 1::7·6 | 1::7·3 | 1::6 | 1::7·9 | 1::7·6 | ||||||
| Proportion of greatest height to pre-anal region | 1::4·37 | 1::4·32 | 1::4·75 | 1::4·42 | 1::5·2 | ||||||
| Total number of dorsal fin-rays (to mutilated termination of tail) | 232 | 205 | 189(?) | 422(?) | 259 | ||||||
| 221 | |||||||||||
| (9 (?)+223) | (14+191) | (14+175) | 14(?) 17(?) | 14+245 | |||||||
| 170 |
It is a pity no drawing or copy of Mr. Forbes's photograph was given showing the caudal extremity of the Okain's Bay specimen.
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Since the occurrence of Regalecus in Victoria, referred to in Mr. Forbes's article on the Okain's Bay fish (and which Victorian specimen was described by Professor McCoy, “Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria,” decade xv.), another is reported as having been found by the Cape Everard lighthousekeeper, for which vide issue of the Melbourne Leader of the 1st August, 1896, page 7, in which paper is also reproduced the illustration—a very rough one—and which, if correct in its details as far as they go, differs considerably from what we recognise as argenteus—for instance, the longitudinal lateral bands or ridges, counting the thin one shown nearest the dorsal margin, number seven; the transverse irregular bands extend over more than half the total length, and in some case right across the body; whilst the higher portion of the dorsal rays are shown as all connected with a common membrane, with the anterior rays the highest, gradually decreasing rearwards without any division.