344 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



round. I have successfully raised this fish to nearly mature 

 growth. (After Eugene Smith 1 ) 



The remarkable spinning habits of this fish have been 

 described by Prof. John A. Ryder in the bulletin of the U. S. 

 Fish Commission for 1881. 



Family 



Cornet Fishes 

 Genus FISTULARIA Linnaeus 



Body extremely elongate, much depressed, broader than deep; 

 scaleless, but having bony plates present on various parts of the 

 body, mostly covered by the skin; head very long, the anterior 

 bones of the skull much produced, forming a long tube, which 

 terminates in the narrow mouth, this tube formed by the sym- 

 plectic, proethmoid, metapterygoid, mesopterygoid, quadrate, 

 palatines, vonier, and mesethmoid; both jaws, and usually the 

 vomer and palatines also, with minute teeth; membrane uniting 

 the bones of the tube below, very lax, so that the tube is capable 

 of much dilation; post-temporal coossified with the cranium; 

 branchiostegals five to seven; gills four, a slit behind the fourth; 

 gill membranes separate, free from the isthmus, gill rakers 

 obsolete; basibranchial elements wanting, pseudobranchiae 

 wanting; air bladder large; spinous dorsal fin entirely 

 absent, soft dorsal short, posterior, somewhat elevated; 

 anal fin opposite it and similar; caudal fin forked, the 

 middle rays produced into a long filament; pectorals small, with 

 a broad base, preceded by a smooth area as in Gasterosteidae, 

 pectoral ossicles 3; interclavicles greatly lengthened, supra- 

 clavicles very small; ventral fins very small, wide apart, abdom- 

 inal (through partial atrophy of the girdle, by which they lose- 

 connection with the interclavicles), far in advance of the dorsal, 

 composed of six soft rays; pyloric caeca few; intestine short; 

 vertebrae very numerous (4444 to 49+28 to 33), the first four ver- 

 tebrae very long. Fishes of the tropical seas, related to the 



'Linn. Soc. N. Y. Proe. 1897. no. 9, p. 31. 



