3i6 Papers from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Tortugas. 



say nothing of the jaws, the deciding structures. Gunther (1870), however, 

 makes this name synonymous with M. milous. 



Gill (1893) gives the name A. tenuicaudatus for an Australian form, 

 making it synonymous with Hector's Myliohatis tenuicaudatus. Reference 

 to Hector (1877), however, throws it out of the genus Aetohatus, since it 

 has teeth in seven rows in each jaw. 



Starks and Morris (1907), in their paper on the "Marine Fishes of 

 Southern California," list an A'etobatus californicus. However, Mr. Starks 

 in a recent letter to the present writer, says that this ray does not have 

 angled teeth and that he now calls it Myliohatis californicus. 



Last of all, Gunther (1910) reverts to the fact that in 1870 he put all 

 Aetobatines into one species, A. narinari, notes that the characters upon 

 which the species are based consist of differences in the length of the snout 

 and in the distribution of the spots, and concludes by saying that he is 

 not yet persuaded that he was in error in 1870, since forms with snouts 

 intermediate between long and short and forms with and without spots 

 are of frequent occurrence. 



However, on turning a page we find this author describing, under the 

 name Aetobatis punctata, a spotted ray from the south Pacific synonymous 

 with Miklouho-Maclay and Macleay's Myliobatis pimctatus (1886). The 

 plate of these latter writers, giving various views of this fish, is reproduced 

 herein as figure 21, plate viii. If this is not sufificient to throw this ray out 

 of the genus A'etobatus (see mouth in the figures) then let it be recalled that 

 these writers in their text say "Teeth-plates of many longitudinal rows of 

 teeth" (see their drawing). That it is, hov/ever, a transitional or intermedi- 

 ate form would seem to follow from the further statement that the middle 

 rows of teeth are largest and that the teeth-plates of the upper jaw are 

 nearly twice as wide as the lower, the proportion being that of 48 to 27. 



Snyder, in his "The Fishes of Okinawa, One of the Riu Kiu Islands" 

 (191 2), lists a species, Aetobatis tobijei, new to the present writer, but gives 

 no data whatever about it. But Jordan and Fow^ler (1903), in their "Re- 

 view of the Elasmobranchiate Fishes of Japan," call this same ray Mylio- 

 batis tobijei and note that its teeth are pavement-like in several series in each 

 jaw. Furthermore Bleeker (1854), the original describer of this ray, names 

 it M. tobijei and says "Upper jaw broader than long with laminated teeth; 

 lower longer than wide, with median hexagonal teeth varying from more 

 than twice to more than three times broader than wide." From this we 

 see that Snyder's fish is not an A'etobatus at all, but a Myliobatis. 



