120 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



Monograph of the Philypni. 

 BY THEO. GILL. 



I. In the year 1837, M. Valenciennes has for the first time separated from 

 the genus Eleotris of Gronovius, a fish which had been previously referred by 

 Schneider, Lacepede and by Cuvier, to genera to which it did not naturally 

 belong. 



This species was first named Platycephalus dormitator, in Schneider's 

 posthumous edition of the " Systema Ichthyologise " of Bloch, from the figure 

 and manuscript description of the Father Plumier. 



Shortly after, M. Lacepede, upon the same documents, established his 

 Gobioniore d o r m e u r . The genus to which it was referred was distinguished 

 by M. Lacepede from the genus Gobius, by the separation of the ventral fins. 

 The group was thus established on the same characters as those by which 

 Cuvier afterwards separated the species under the Gronovian name of Eleotris, 

 but the homogeneousness of the group was destroyed by the introduction of 

 species which had no affinity to the Eleotroids. 



Subsequently, Cuvier, in his " Regne Animal," revised the characters of 

 the genus Eleotris, and introduced among true species of the genus, the Eleo- 

 tris dormitatrix, which is the same as the above mentioned species of 

 Bloch and of Lacepede. 



No additional information was communicated respecting this species until 

 the year 1S37. At that time, M. de Valenciennes, in his monograph of the 

 Gobioids contained in the twelfth volume of the " Histoire Naturelle des Pois- 

 sons," revised the characters of the genus Eleotris, and in addition to those 

 by which Cuvier distinguished it, referred to the presence of teeth only on the 

 jaws. From the genus, as thus constituted, he has separated the Platycepha- 

 lus dormitator of Schneider, or the Eleotris dormitatrix of Cuvier, 

 on account of the presence of teeth on the front of the vomer. Valenciennes 

 has taken the species as the type of a new genus, which he has called Philyp- 

 nus, and the presence of vomerine teeth is the only character by which he 

 distinguishes it from his Eleotris; he has called the species Philypnus dor- 

 mitator, and has given an extended description of it. He had examined 

 specimens from the islands of Martinique and Porto Rico, and has signalized its 

 presence in Saint Domingo. The species thus described is the only one which 

 he has referred to the genus. 



But in the same volume as that in which he has introduced the genus Phi- 

 lypnus, Valenciennes has placed in the genus Gobius, a Chinese fish which 

 Lacepede has described under the name of Bostryche chinois. This fish, 

 ^as will afterwards be shown, is nearly allied to the species of the genus Phi- 

 ypnus. 



II. The Bostryche chinois or Bostrychus sinensis, was first intro- 

 duced into Systematic Nomenclature by Lacepede, who founded the species 

 only on a Chinese drawing. The genus Bostrychus was formed for its recep- 

 tion, and was characterized by its "elongated and serpentiform body, two 

 dorsal fins, the second of which is separated from the caudal fin, two barbels 

 at the upper jaw, and the eyes quite large and without a lid." As a second 

 species of the genus so defined, Lacepede has placed a species which was 

 ascertained by Valenciennes to be a species of Ophicephalus, a genus belonging 

 to an entirely different family from the Bostrychus sinensis, and which 

 possesses a single long continuous dorsal. Notwithstanding this rather im- 

 portant variation from Bostrychus sinensis, Lacepede chiefly distinguishes 

 his second species by a difference of color, the former being described as brown, 

 and the latter as spotted with green ; from the latter character the name of 

 R. maculatus was conferred on it. The B. maculatus, like the B. 

 sinensis, was only known from a Chinese drawing. As Valenciennes has 



[April, 



