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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 4, p. 512.

5I2 THE INDIAN EMPIRE true rays, numerous berycoids, and curious frogfishes (Pedicu- lati), pleuronectoids, scopeloids, and eels; as well as many species of the characteristic deep-sea families Ophidiidae, Macnrridae, Sternop'ychidae, Stomiatidae, Alepocephalidae, and Halosauridae. Many of them are conspicuously adapted to their environment: such are Aulastomomorpha, Leptoderma, and Bathyclupea, with their enormous eyes; anmprogrammus, Neoscopelus, and Polyipnus, with their rows of large luminary organs; the purblind Onirodes, and Benthobatis (the only electric ray yet known from the depths), with their luminous lures; the defective-eyed Bathypterois, with its streaming com- pensatory feelers; and Tauredophidium, with rudiments of eyes buried beneath the bones of the head. In another direction, illustrating the need for special parental care in the sullen bottoms of the deep, we find viviparous Teleostei, such as Saccogaster, Diplacanthopoma, and Hephthocara. Lastly, we have Chiasmodus, Chauliodus, Photostomias, .lalacosteus, and Astronesthes, all proclaiming, with fang and gape that would have startled even the poet of evolution, the unlovely fact that the fishes of the sunless abysses, where plant-life (bac- teria perhaps excepted) is interdicted, are ravenous beyond imagination.