Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/111

Rh

The third ray of the pectoral fin longest, the second and first regularly becoming shorter.

The remarkable shortness of the head, the roundness and perpendicularity of the front, equality of the jaws, interlocking of the teeth, and singular chin, are sufficient to distinguish this species from any one hitherto recognized as British; at the same time it so nearly agrees with the figure and description of the Orphe of Rondeletius, that I have little hesitation in believing it to be the same fish.

It is intimated by Rondeletius, that among the Greeks more than one fish was known by the name of Orphus; and we further learn that the word Cernua, by which some Latin writers have rendered the Greek Ορφος, has been applied to a still greater number of species, all of them distinct from this, and even to the river Rud.

Ray, who limits the name Orfus to the Rud, describes the fish which he terms Orpheus veterum, from Rondeletius, in a manner to show that he was altogether unacquainted with it; and as the species termed Orphus by Bellonius is the other and more common one known by this name among the Greeks, we need not wonder at finding Ruysch resigning all hope of extricating from such utter confusion what he saw might still be a well-defined species.

Nor does it appear that even the most industrious and able naturalists of the present day have been more fortunate than their prede-