ACANTHOPTERYGII. 295 



must be the corvina, or sciana nigra, L., although the figure 

 which he gives of it is false, and joins to the oblique lines of 

 the scicena cirrhosa, a longer beard than that of any known 

 sciaena. 



Plumier was very well acquainted with this fish, and 

 there is a good figure in his papers under the name of aigle, 

 negre or maigre of the ocean. 



The work of Willughby began to introduce confusion into 

 a history in which none had hitherto existed, except these 

 slight interspersions of vulgar nomenclature. This observer, 

 or his editor Ray, speak of the sciaena only with hesitation, 

 and without being able to fix the number or the characters; 

 and they manifestly confound the species which had been 

 distinguished by their predecessors. Among other errors 

 they fancy that they have found the maigre in a voung 

 corvina. 



It is easy, with a little attention, to perceive that the work 

 of Willughby has served as a basis for that of Artedi, and 

 subsequently for the part fish in the system of Linnaeus. 

 Artedi partakes of the hesitation of Willughby. on the dis- 

 tinction which should be made between the maigre and 

 the corb, or cotvina. He unites under one species the articles 

 which regard these two fishes. Linnaeus gives to this com- 

 plex species the name of scicena umbra, which should have 

 belonged only to the maigre, but the characters which he 

 assigns to it, such as black fins, &c, were those of the 

 corvina, and from that time the maigre remained, as it were, 

 effaced from the catalogues of naturalists. 



It was to no purpose that Duhamel reproduced a new de- 

 scription and an exact figure. Neither Gmelin nor Bloch 

 paid the least attention to it ; and although the last had 

 clearly announced that there existed an umbra different from 

 the corb, and that Artedi and Linnaeus were in error in con- 

 founding these two fishes, as he gave no figure of his umbra, 



