Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S.] [Milford-on-Sea.
HORNED OX-RAY, OR DEVIL-FISH.
This species and its allies attain enormous proportions. One taken at Barbadoes required seven yoke of oxen to draw it.
Between the Sharks and Rays there is a curious and interesting link in the form of the Monk-fish, or Angel-fish, which is common on all sandy shores, and a frequent victim of the trawl. Such local names as Mongrel-skate and Shark-ray indicate a widespread acceptance of its intermediate position between the two groups under notice. Like some of the sharks already noticed, it produces living young, and its maximum size may be set down as at any rate over 7 feet. The writer measured and weighed one trawled in Bournemouth Bay during the summer of 1896. Its length was nearly 4½ feet, and its weight rather less than 50 lbs. Like many of the rays, this species feeds to a great extent on flat-fishes.
Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S.] [Milford-on-Sea.
WHIP-TAILED STING-RAY.
Sting-rays are abundant in tropical seas.
In outward form the monk-fish, though it is in reality more nearly allied to the sharks, brings us by an easy transition to the flattened Rays, with their long whip-like tails and pointed snouts. There are a dozen, or rather more if we count casual visitors, of these skates and rays in British seas, the largest being the great Eagle-ray, examples of which have been recorded of the enormous weight of 1,000 lbs. Many of the smaller kinds are studded with sharp spines, curved in some species, and the Thornback owes to these its trivial name. All these rays, in fact, have some form or other of formidable offensive and defensive apparatus. The Sting-ray has on its tail a fearful serrated dagger, 6 or 8 inches long in large examples; while the Torpedo- or Numb-fish has electric organs in the head, with the aid of which it can give a shock sufficiently strong to paralyse the fishes on which it feeds.
