Two With One Stone

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 189, 12 August 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

Two With One Stone

EVERYONE knows the fascinating life story of the flatfish— how it starts life as an ordinary symmetrical tiny fish and later decides to spend the remainder of its existence with one side lying flat on the sea bottom—with this change of habit the skull undergoes a slight twist, bringing the under eye besides its fellow on the top side.

Imagine the interest caused by tho receipt of a deep-water solo having three distinct eyes. Such a specimen was recently sent to tho museum by a fisherman. As tho importance of so unique a specimen was fully realised it wns sent immediately to bo X-rayed, and was later preserved In formalin. Imagine my feelings next day when I removed the specimen from the preservative to find that the third eye fell out. Some information volunteered from another source revealed the fuH story of the three-eyed sole.

Apparently the captain of a local trawler wished to play a harmless prank on one of his crew so he Inserted with great neatness and care an extra eye in a normal sole. Tho resultant specimen was so convincing that the victim was completely deceived snd he later, in all good faith, sent the exhibit to the museum where it claimed its second victim in myself.

Certainly there Is no record of a three-eyed fish but the flounder group, owing to it# habit of twisting the skull and eyes, would be the most likely fish in which such an abnormality could reasonably occur.

1 certainly had my wits about me the next day when another fisherman brought up a further fish specimen. "Ever seen a Scotch flounder?" said he. This one proved to be an interesting freak unaided by the attentions of the practical joker—it had an extra

ByA. fF. B. Powell fringe of fln rays completely bridging across the underside some distance up front the tail, and this feature in its resemblance to a kilt suggested its impromptu name. The fish has a thickening of the vertebra near where the fringe occurs, implying that the tail may have begun to duplicate but was later suppressed. The most interesting feature is that the kilt-like fringe has more in common structurally with the marginal fin fringe than with the tail.

One of the most amusing practical jokes in natural history took exactly f»0 years to be exploded. The victim was Count F. de Castelnau, who wrote a paper entitled "On a New Ganoid Fish From Queensland." He named the alleged new species Ompax spatuloides on the slender evidence of a drawing of a flsh that a friend had eaten for breakfast.

After a lapse of 50 years a correspondent revealed the whole story in an article in the Sydney "Bulletin" (August 0, 1930), snd it reads as follows:—

"A sweet-scented gum of the northern parts of Queensland perpetuates the name of (,'arl Theodore Staiger, who was at one time director of the Brisbane Museum, and was made the victim of one of the quaintest jokes in scientific history. While he wa* visiting (ia.vndah station the hard-eases there prepared a new fish for Mtatgcr. made of the head of a lung-fish, the body of a mullet and the tall of an eel. It was cooked and placed before him for breakfast, with the remark that It was something new— a rare Ash that had never been seen anywhere but at Cayndah. Mr. Staiger was immensely interested, and expressed regret that he had not seen it "live. On being told that It might be months before another wns caught he made a careful sketch of the cooked speclnjen before he started to eat it. The sketch and a description were subsequently sent to an Ichthyological expert. Count Cast el nan. and Unit gentleman named it Ompax spatuloides. Whenever a marine mvsterv was captured' afterwards in the (i'ayndah district, the locals would remark with a grin that "it must be an ompax I"

From the illustration given by Castelnau it seems much more likely that the head of ompax was represented by the bill of a Platypus, particularly as the original description refers to this feature as "having very much the form of the beak of the Platypus."

Scientific descriptions of new species are now required to be more precise, the name being founded upon one specimen in particular, which becomes the holotvpe and is preserved for subsequent reference. It is unlikely that a noted scientist such as Castelnau could to-day get away with the proposal of a new species based upon a specimen someone else had eaten.

In the dark ages of geological science, before the study of fossil remains bad l>een properly understood, there lived in Germany an enthusiastic professor who made many remarkable discoveries of fossils, in the limestone of Solenhofen, Bavaria. The professor's enthusiasm ran so high that he eagerly sought all unusual specimens dug froqi the ground and included references and illustrations of them in a series of books that lie had printed atTlis own expense. Many of his unusual finds turned out to be objects planted by his students as practical jokes, but the professor was entirely without suspicion until one day he unearthed from ancient strata a piece of pottery upon which was engraved his own name!

The late Dr. Allan Thompson once told a good story at his own expense. On his frequent trips on the North Island Main Trunk railway he became interested in dark-coloured sparrows that seemed to be restricted to the vicinity of Mercer. Knowing the then stationmaster at Mercer. Dr. Thompson wrote seeking information about these unusual sparrows that appeared to exhibit a melanistic trait in their plumage. Imagine his feelings upon receiving the curt reply: "Yes. I know all about them. They nest in our engine sheds!"

The citing of wrong localities is another source of worry to the naturalist and has occasioned many incongruous scientific names—Hinea brasiliana conies not from Bra7.il, hut from Australia, and Cassis madagascaricnsis is a native of the West Indies.

Even the scientific staff of the famous Challenger Kxpedition made their errors, one being the application of a wrong reference number to a deep-water sample which, for a**time, credited New South Wales with l."> species of shellfish that were actually dredged in the North Atlantic.