ANACANTHINI. 371 



Length of head to gill-opening 1 -2 inches. 



Width of ditto 0'52 



GYMNELIS VIBIDIS, var. UNIMACULATUS. 



G. subconcolor, ocello unico nigro prope initium pinnae dorsalis, 



Radii: B. 6-6; D. 95; A. 70 ; C. 8 ; P. 12; V. 0. 



PLATE XXX., fig. 1, 2, nat. size. 



This fish has such a general resemblance to the figure of 

 Ophidium stigma of Bennet, published in the Zoological Ap- 

 pendix to Captain Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific (p. 67, 

 pi. xx. fig. 1), that I was inclined to consider it to be the same 

 species, until I observed that Dr. Collie mentions " very small 

 scales" as existing on his fish. A single specimen only of 

 stigma was procured in Kotzebue Sound. Mr. Lay's sketch, 

 from which the figure was engraved, is said to have been 

 slight, and neither his notes nor Dr. Collie's are sufficiently 

 detailed on the more essential points to render even the genus 

 certain. The specimen we have figured was obtained by Sir 

 Edward Belcher, in Northumberland Sound, and is so like 

 Gymnelis viridis in its general form and structure, that I 

 readily follow the example of Kroyer and treat it as a mere 

 variety. This author, in the ichthyological plates of Gai- 

 mard's Voyage to Scandinavia, represents three varieties of 

 Gymnelis viridis (pi. xv.). Fig. a is the portrait of an in- 

 dividual having a row of four small eyed spots on the base of 

 the dorsal, one of them over the anus, two before it, and two 

 still lesser ones behind it. Fig. b has a single spot nearly in 

 the situation of that shown in our Plate VIII., and fig. c is 

 without spots on the dorsal, but has about twelve transverse, 

 pale, irregular bars on the body, of which the fifth is over the 

 anus. 



The integuments of the fins are rather more delicate in our 

 unimaculatus than in the specimen figured in Plate VIL, which 

 is to be attributed perhaps to its greater youth. Each ray of 

 the proximal portion of the anal has a small lobe at its point 



