364 GOBIID.E. 



The roof of the mouth is furnished with acute longitudinal 

 plaits of membrane, whose edges are set with soft, round 

 papillse. The upper and lower pharyngeals are armed with 

 brush-like teeth, curved backwards, and the rakers of the 

 branchial arches are round, sessile knobs, in two rows on each 

 arch, also rough with minute teeth. 



Lateral nostril on each side, forming a tubular projection 

 close to the premaxillary : the mesial one is an open orifice 

 like a pore. (See fig. 2.) There are many small mucous pores 

 round the nostrils, and on the head and fore parts of the body, 

 some of which are represented in the same figure. Eyes 

 placed nearer to the end of the snout than to the gill-opening, 

 and so high as to encroach on the profile of the face. Gill- 

 opening a vertical lateral slit ; the membrane of the throat 

 being continuous with that of the belly without any transverse 

 fold or flap of the branchiostegous membrane. A row of 

 open pores marks the limbs of the mandible. (See fig. 3.) 

 The rudimentary veutrals are attached to the os hyoides be- 

 tween the lower angles of the gill- openings. 



The lateral line, composed of open pores, descends from the 

 suprascapular region behind the pectoral, keeping while in 

 the ventral region nearly in the middle of the height, but 

 running lower from the anus backwards ; it cannot be traced 

 quite to the middle point between the anus and the tip of the 

 tail. 



There are no scales. To be certain on this point, I care- 

 fully skinned a specimen of which I purposed to prepare the 

 skeleton, and having dried the skin on glass, examined it with 

 the microscope, without discovering any trace of a scale. This 

 character alone is sufficient to distinguish it from the three 

 members of the genus made known by Professor Reiuhardt. 

 It may therefore prove to be the type of a distinct division of 

 the genus to which the Blennius polaris of Sabine, should it 

 hereafter be rediscovered, may be found to belong. 



Fins. The pectorals when fully spread out have a broadly 

 ovate form, approaching to the orbicular : their rays are 

 branched at the tips. Owing to the thickness of the rather 



