Single-Finned Lophius

Single-Finned Lophius

 

This depressed blackish lophius

is the last thing in the box, awash

and pickled in a thick glass bottle,

slopping wanly, somehow forlorn

of expression. Dubious lophius,

inflated like bellows, suspended

in perpetual death-throes. Nodder,

let us have lateral, ventral and

dorsal perspectives upon it,

depicted size-of-nature. We’ll make

two foldout plates for our sixth

volume. Oh, and mix a little

pink for where the mouth hangs

open; that fish-white is far too

corpselike for our subscribers.

 

Here – there’s a note. “Found

washed-up, somewhat odorous,

snagged in kelp.” Numerous

teeth, tiny sharp. Nevertheless,

the whole thing suggests

something foetal. Hurry up.

 

Ah – look! The next chest is better:

a falcon skin from Carolina. Lend

me one of your lice. With some

magnification, that will pad out

this volume nicely, along with

the grey baboon, medicinal leech,

Fasciculated Ascdia, Peruvian

Jay, Lumbriciform Lizard and

that little Pyramidal Clio from

the American Ocean. I’ll get

Smith to shoot a Grey Wagtail

for good measure. Enough,

Nodder, I think we can say that

the depressed Lophius

is well

and truly

painted.

 

 

Poem by Giles Watson, s014. Picture: NM, Volume 6. Shaw was deeply confused by this specimen, tentatively concluding that it was a species of Monkfish or Anglerfish, but theorising that it could be “the foetus of any of the Trichechi” – apparently a reference to the Walrus. It was not until 1940 that Gilbert Percy Whitley correctly identified Shaw’s “Lophius” as a Coffin Ray (Hypnos monopterygius), a species of electric ray which is quite common in Australian inshore waters. The ray had by that stage already been described by the French zoologist Auguste Duméril in 1852. Once they have been stranded, the bodies of coffin-rays rapidly become bloated; this was clearly what threw Shaw so far off course. See Brian Saunders, Discovery of Australia's Fishes: A History of Australian Ichthyology to 1930, CSIRO, 2012, p. 14.

 

Done