JOHANN CARL

OTTO

See also:

• JOHANN CARL OTTO RIBBECK (1827-1898)

RIBBECK (1827-1898)  , German classical scholar, was born at Erfurt in Saxony on the 23rd of July 1827 . Having held professorial appointments at Kiel and Heidelberg, he succeeded his tutor Ritschl in the chair of classical philology at Leipzig, where he died on the 18th of July 1898 . Ribbeck was the author of several standard works on the poets and poetry of Rome, the most important of which are the following: Geschichte der ronaischen Dichtung (2nd ed., 1894-1900); Die romische Tragodie im Zeitalter der Republik (1875); Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta, including the tragic and comic fragments (3rd ed., 1897) . As a textual critic he was distinguished by considerable rashness, and never hesitated to alter, rearrange or reject as spurious what failed to reach his standard of excellence: These tendencies are strikingly shown in his editions of the Epistles and Ars Poetica of Horace (1869), the Satires of Juvenal (1859) and in the supplementary essay Der echte and unechte Juvenal (1865) . In later years, however, he became much more conservative . His edition of Virgil (2nd ed., 1894-1895), although only critical, is a work of great erudition, especially the Prolegomena . His biography of Ritschl (1879-1881) is one of the best works of its kind . The influence of his tutor may be seen in Ribbeck's critical edition of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, and Beitrdge zur Lehre von den lateinischen Partikeln, a work of much promise, which causes regret that he did not publish further results of his studies in that direction . His miscellaneous Reden and Vortrdge were published after his death (Leipzig, 1899) . He took great interest in the monumental Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, and it was chiefly owing to his efforts that the government of Saxony was induced to assist its production by a considerable subsidy . The chief authority for his life is Otto Ribbeck; ein Bild seines Lebens aus seinen Briefen (1901), ed. by Emma Ribbeck . RIBBON-FISHES (Trachypteridae), a family of marine fishes readily recognized by their long, compressed, tape-like body, short head, narrow mouth and feeble dentition .

A high dorsal fin occupies the whole length of the back; an anal is absent, and the caudal, if

present, consists of two fascicles of rays of which the upper is prolonged and directed upwards . The pectoral fins are small, the ventrals composed of several rays, or of one long ray only . Ribbon-fishes possess all the characteristics of fishes living at very great depths . They are fins especially, and the membrane connecting them, are of a very delicate and brittle structure . In young ribbon-fishes some of the fin-rays are prolonged in an extraordinary degree, and sometimes provided with appendages (see fig . 2) . There are only two genera in the family, Regalecus, the oar-fish, and Trachypterus . In the former the length of the body is about fifteen times its depth . The head likewise is compressed, short, resembling in its form that of a herring; the eye is large; the mouth is small, and provided with very feeble teeth . A long many-rayed dorsal fin, of which the very long anterior rays form a kind of high crest, extends from the top of the head to the end of the tail; the anal and perhaps the caudal fins are absent; but the ventrals (and by this the oar-fish is distinguished from the other ribbon-fishes) are developed into a pair of long filaments, which terminate in a paddle-shaped extremity, but are too flexible to assist in locomotion . The whole body is covered with a layer of silvery epidermoid sub-stance, which easily comes off and adheres to other objects . Oar-fishes are the largest deep-sea fishes known, the majority of the specimens observed measuring 12 ft. in length; but some are recorded to have exceeded 20 ft .

Their range in the great depths of the ocean seems to extend over all seas, but, however numerous they may be in the depths which are their

home, it is only by rare accident that specimens reach the. surface . Thus from the coasts of Great Britain only about twenty captures are known in the long space of a century and a half, and not more than thirteen from those of Norway . Oar-fishes have been considered by naturalists to havegiven rise to some of the tales of " sea-serpents," but their size as well as the facility with which they are secured when observed render this solution of the question of the existence of such a creature improbable . When they rise to the surface of the water they are either dead or in a helpless and dying condition . The ligaments and tissues by which the bones and muscles were held together whilst the fish lived under the immense pressure of great depths have then become loosened and torn by the expansion of the internal gases; and it is only with difficulty that the specimens can be taken entire out of the water, and preserved afterwards . Every specimen found has been more or less mutilated; and especially the terminal portion of the tail, which seems to end in a delicate tapering filament, has never been perfect ;it is perhaps usually lost as a useless appendage at a much earlier period of the life of the fish . Of Trachypterus, specimens have been taken in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, at Mauritius and in the Pacific . The species from the Atlantic has occurred chiefly on the northern coasts, Iceland, Scandinavia, Orkneys and Scotland . It is known as T. arcticus, in English the deal-fish; its Icelandic name is Vagmaer . Its length is 5 to 8 ft . Specimens seem usually to be driven to the shore by gales in winter, and are sometimes left by the tide . S .

Nilsson, however, in Scandinavia observed a living specimen in two or three fathoms of water moving something like a flat-fish with one side turned obliquely upwards .