NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18629, 9 February 1924, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

FISHES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. BY J. DRI'MMOND,. F.L.S., T.Z.S. A photograph of a fish about three feet long, with a hoe-like apparatus fused to its snout, has been sent by a Kaikoura resident, with an inquiry as to the identity of the original, which he describes as " a rummy." In New Zealand this fish is known as the elephant fish, a title whose application is not apparent. It belongs to the same group as the sharks, rays, skates, and torpedo fish. These, in the structure of the brain and of the sense organs, hold the highest place among fishes. The elephant fish's closest ally in the group is the king of the herrings, or cat-fish, of northern seas. The king of the herrings does not possess the strange hoe in front of its head, but is sufficiently fanciful in appearance to have been christened " chimaera " by Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish systematic. New Zealand's elephant fish, on account of its affinities, belongs to the same family, the Chimeridae, and for it the title is very apt. Officially, it is Chimaera callorhynchus. The second word, which means beautiful snout seems to have been given derisively, as the hoe is a gross disfigurement, devoid of beauty. The flesh of the elephant fish is described as having a delicate flavour and texture. On the Nora Niven trawling expedition in New Zealand waters, 16 years ago, this fish one day was served up for meal's. It seems to have been appreciated at the saloon table, but members of the crew refused even to taste it, threw it overboard, and complained to the master that the cook was serving them with shark. Mr. Waite, as an ichtyologist, wag less prejudiced. " Its flesh," he states, "is really good, and would be welcomed in a country poorer than New Zealand." The- elephent-fish evidently is very plentiful is the Canterbury Bight. Pegasus Bay, and further south. It formed a substantial percentage of the takings of the net in trawlings there. Off Lyttelton, the trawl once brought up a quarter of a ton of elephantfish. At another haul, near Lyttelton, 200 elephant-fish were brought up. Off Otago Heads, one haul brought up 150, and another haul no fewer than 306.

The elephant-fish has been taken all along the east coast of the South Island, but has not been reported from any other place. Periodically, scores of its empty egg-cases, resembling dark, thin bone in structure, are cast on the New Brighton beach. An egg occasionally comes us> with a case, but the elephant-fish's egg is rarer than the moa's, as rare, almost, as the fabled roc's. A member of an extinct species of elephant fish, dedicated to Sir James Hector, left a tooth at Amuri Bluff, North Canterbury, in the Upper Cretaceous Period, some 65,000,000 years ago, as physicists compute the earth's age. Another member of the same species left the upper and lower parts of its jaw in the same (period. The tooth is in the British Museum, and the fossil jaw is in the Dominion Museum, Wellington. A third extinct elephant-fish, recorded from Amuri Bluff, seems to have found a last refuge in New Zealand, as it lived in the Upper Cretaceous here, but in only the Lower Cretaceous in Europe.

In Upper Cretaceous rock at Amuri Bluff, there have been found teeth of other members of the order of the sharks and rays. Some of them are in beds that contain many extinct cuttlefish, on which, apparently, . these fish preyed. One, a goblin-shark, was widely and bountifully distributed in Cretaceous, seas. It ranged from New Zealand to "Patagonia, Southern India, Holland, Northern France, Madagascar, Saxony, Bohemia, Southern Russia, Switzerland, and England. Spines from the tail of an extinct stingray that lived in Cretaceous ■ times, and ..down into the Eocene, and Miocene Periods of the Cainozoic Era, which followed close on the era of Middle Life, have been found at Amuri Bluff, at Waipara, and at Coleridge Creek, all in North Canterbury. The 'spines seem to connect" that extinct sting-ray with living sting-rays in China and Indian seas, and in the Red Sea. Fragments of a wider spine, in Cainozoic rock, near Lake Waihola, Otago, • are not sufficiently distinct to show their owner's relationship to other sting-rays. .;-

In a flat, rounded nodule near Coverham, Clarence Valley, Marlborough, .an almost complete fish of the Upper Cretaceous Period was preserved. It is contorted, but only part of the tail is wanting. This fish, probably is the ancestral form of some species of living fish in the rivers of New South Wales, and on the coasts of Chili and Peru. An extinct species of gigantic shark, once cosmopolitan, with teeth three inches long and three inches wide at the base, seems to have made its earliest appearance in New Zealand.. It occurs in the Upper Cretaceous at Amuri Bluff and in rocks of a later time at Waitaki, Raglan, Waihao Forks Tokomairiro, Waihola Gorge, and other ' places. , The great white-shark, now found in most tropical and temperate seas, is remarkable, on account of the life of the species having extended from the dawn of the Cainozoic Era until the present time. 'Its fossil (remains are found at Cavers-ham (near Dunedin), Greta (North Canterbury), and the Esk River (Hawke's Bay). Most of the fossil fish remains in New Zealand are parts of sharks or rays. This is explained by the fact that the teeth of those fish are conspicuous as fossils on account of their large size, and because they are periodically shed by an individual and replaced, and, as fossils, are more plentiful than the teeth of other fish.

Perhaps the most brilliant fish in the Seven Seas is reported doubtfully in the waters oi the Chatham Islands. Its dazzling brilliance is in its scarlet or Vermillion fins, golden, scales, and its sides, bluish green above, violet in the middle, and red beneath, the whole variegated with oval spots of sparkling silver—a combination which, ichthyologists state, is excelled by the colours of no other fish. The opah's real 'home is the Atlantic Ocean It is merely a straggler to waters near the coasts of the Old Country. When it is shown in the window of a London fishmonger, crowds stop to . admire its magnificence. Individuals seems to be washed ashore at Topenga Bay, on the northern coast of the Chathams, fairly often. Mr. E. R. Faite, some years ago, rode 18 miles, part of the way over dangerous bogs and treacherous water-courses, in search of the remains 'of the opah at Topenga Bay, but his quest was unsuccessful Although he did not see the opah there lie has no doubt that it is the fish which a Chatham Islander described to him. To its surprising colours it adds the quality of a delicious flesh, and there is plenty of it, some individuals weighing up to 1001b When taken it always is washed ashore, or gets into shallow water and fails to get out; there is no record of its having been caught with hook or net. The popular name of this creature with a coat' of many colours is a native word in the language of Guiana, Africa. When the first opah. was exhibited in London 173 years ago, according to the records, a native of Guiana said ho recognised it as & fish found off the coast of bis country, and known locally as opah.