Volume 9 - Electric Scotland

NOTES ON SCOTTISH CUMACEANS 215
During the trawling experiments conducted on board the
"Garland" for the years 1886 to 1895 inclusive, thirty-seven examples
of the "Flapper Skate" are recorded as having been captured in
1886 and 1887, and none afterwards. Of these twenty-one were
mature and the rest immature fish. It is
very remarkable that the
only specimens obtained should have been taken during the very
earliest years of the " Garland's " important observations. Is it possible
that a mistake was made in the identification of the species ?
RAIA ALBA, Laccpede.
Raia oxyrhynchus, PARNELL, pp. 427-429.
" Occasionally met with
in the Firth of Forth " "
(fide Neill), but no example has
hitherto fallen under my own immediate notice. I cannot vouch
for the accuracy of the statement."
Three White Skate were captured in the Firth on the i2th of
June 1888 :
one, 24 inches, at Station 3 and
; two, 21 inches, at
Station 4 ("Rep. Fish. Board. Scot.," 1888, part iii. p. 38).
TRYGON PASTINACA (Linnaeus).
PARNELL, pp. 440-442. "The only example I have met with . . .
was captured in the Firth of Forth in the salmon-nets above
Queensferry in the month of August, and sent me as being the
only fish of the sort the fishermen had ever seen" (p. 441).
The Sting Ray appears to be an extremely rare fish in the waters
of the estuary and their immediate vicinity. I only know of a single
instance of its occurrence since Dr. Parnell's record. In December
1897 I examined a specimen, 14.5 inches in extreme length and 6
inches broad, which had been captured off the Isle of May.
NOTES ON SCOTTISH CUMACEANS.
By THOMAS SCOTT, F.L.S.
THE new work on the Cumacea of Norway by Professor
G. O. Sars, which is now in course of publication, will tend
greatly to facilitate the study of this aberrant, but peculiarly
interesting group of Crustaceans. This work, which forms
volume iii. of Professor Sars' " Crustacea of Norway," will,
like the two preceding volumes, be found indispensable to
students of the British Crustacea, because the majority of
the species hitherto observed in our seas are also 'represented