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Show 1866.] MR. J. COUCH ON AUSONIA CUVIERI. 333 wind was strong from the east and waves rough, this fish was thrown on shore alive, on a small beach near the Dodmen, on the south coast of Cornwall; and besides some bruises which it then received, and wounds from the attack of a Gull, a further and more formidable danger was encountered from a fisherman who offered a price for it, that it might furnish bait for his crab-pots-an ignoble fate, from which the Sturgeon has not always escaped, and which I have reason to believe that other things of no small esteem to naturalists have not unfrequently suffered. It happened, however, in the present instance that a fisherman of greater intelligence was able, in my behalf, to offer a higher price ; and I had the gratification of receiving this fish in a condition in which I was able to perceive that it had suffered nothing in its shape, its general condition, or colour. The length of this example was, in a straight line to the fork of the tail, 3 feet 9 inches, which may be regarded as about the usual length of this fish, since, while the specimen described by Rafinesque is said to have measured 5 feet, that which is described by Nardo did not exceed 2| feet, with a weight of 20 pounds, and that of Rafinesque 110 rotuli. Of our fish, the depth where greatest was 14 inches; the body and head much compressed, smooth, without the slightest appearance of scales ; and where portions of the surface have been described as rough, as if sprinkled with bran, nothing like it appeared, except slightly on the underside near the tail; but the absence of this may have been produced by the rough usage it had received when thrown on shore by the waves. No mark of a lateral line ; the gape restricted, but for its size the mouth capacious within ; the jaws injured by violence, the lower a little protruded ; mystache short and wide ; teeth none, either in the jaws or palate. Eye large, round, low on the side of the head, in a line with the opening of the mouth; nostrils close to the front, near the upper jaw, and ^ above them a falling in of the outline ; a shallow depression running backward from it along the border of the gill-covers, and continuous with it a depression on the side, in which the pectoral fin may be received. Gill-covers smooth, firm, shutting close, the hindmost border elliptical, and not reaching to the root of the pectoral fin. Above the falling in of the front the outline rises steeply in a circular form, and is carried back in a moderately thin ridge to the dorsal fin, which is behind the middle of the body, and opposite the anal. The line of the belly is also firm and thin; the vent far forward from the anal fin and under the pectoral, where it is covered with a valve which moves on a hinge. Behind the dorsal and anal fins the body becomes narrow and broader ; and on each side of this, near the root of the tail, is a prominent carination, and slightly beyond this a lower elevation on each side of it, resembling what is found on the tail of the Mackerel. The termination of the body is a little expanded, and at the insertion of the caudal fin slightly crenated. The dorsal and anal fins have each thirteen stout rays; the pectoral, whose origin is at a foot from the front, measures 10 inches in length, narrow towards the end, with twenty rays, of which the lower are short and slight; caudal fin forked, with twelve rays above and |