NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 201 



Schelhammer* The first is a fish of the Mediterranean, closely resembling 

 the Ophidium barbatum, according to Rondelet, but distinguished by its want 

 of barbels and its yellow color; it has been identified by Cuvierf with his 

 " Bonzelle imberbe" the Fierasfer acus Kaup. The second was evidently based 

 on the Murxnoides gunnellm of authors, as BroussonetJ and Cuvierg have 

 shown. The Ophidion cirris carens of the " Synonymia" is therefore a com- 

 pound ; that of the " Genera" is only based on the Ophidion flavum $ imberbe 

 Auctoruin," (Schonevelde,) and said to inhabit the Baltic Sea; itisthus 

 primarily the Murienoides gunnellm. Artedi was apparently not acquainted 

 through autopsy with any of his Ophidia. 



The Ophidion of the Fauna Suecica, placed among the Jugulares, is also, 

 without doubt, the Murserioides gvnnellus, of which Linnaeus had not then men- 

 tioned the ventral fins. The formula of the fins in the tenth edition of the 

 Systema is similar, but with the addition of the rays of the ventrals. 



Subsequently, Gronovius, in the Zoophylacium,|| connected this name with 

 a fish which appears to be nothing more than an Ophidion barbatum, of which 

 the barbels had been destroyed, as Cuvierf suggests, or concealed within the 

 limbs of the lower jaw and overlooked, as may readily be the case. We 

 might have hoped to have had this question solved by Dr. Giinther, as, ac- 

 cording to Dr. Gray,** the Gronovian fish was in the collection purchased for 

 the British Museum ; Dr. Giinther has, however, not referred to the specimen 

 in his Catalogue. 



Pennantff next affixed the same name to a fish found near Weymouth, and 

 communicated to him by the Duchess of Portland, giving a figure of it in 

 the fourth volume of his British Zoology, but no description. This fish is 

 apparently a common eel, as BroussonetJJ and Cuvierf have suggested ; pro- 

 bably Peunant and his friends were deceived by some anomalous appearance 

 of the fish itself, as it appears to have been shorter than usual. There is, at 

 least, nothing but the eel found in European or, indeed, any other waters, 

 which at all resembles the fish figured by Pennant. |j|| 



In a subsequent edition of the British Zoology, this figure was replaced by 

 one in the meanwhile published by Montague under the name of Ophidium 

 imberbe. 



Such is the essential history of the applications of the name of Ophidium 

 imberbe down to the year 1777. The age of compilers, commencing with 

 Haiiy and culminating in Lac^pede, Bloch, Schneider and Shaw, soon after 

 commenced. These authors variously combined the notices of their prede- 

 cessors, and finally succeeded in involving a species, concerning which there 

 was no reasonable room for doubt, in such mystery that almost all memory 

 of the original type was eventually lost. 



Haiiy, in 1788, in the Encyclopedic Methodique,^H adopted in his descrip- 



* Schelhammer, De Anatome Xiphiae piseis uti Lumpi et Ophidii, p. 23. 



t Cuvicr, Mem. du Museum, i. 1815, pp. 312. 313. 



t Broussonet, Phil. Trans., London, lxxi 1781, p. 438. 



| Olivier, op. eit., i. pp. 315, 310. 

 || Gronovius, Zoophylacium, 1763, No. 401. 



1f Cuvier, Mem. du Museum, i. 1815, p. 316. 



**Catalogue of Fish Collected and Described by Lawrence Theodore Gronovius, now in the British 

 Museum, London, 1854, (Ophidion congrus, B. M., p. 164.) 



tt Pennant, British Zool., iv. 1, App , 39S, iv. pi. 93. 



jj Broussonet, Phil. Trans., lxxi. 1781, p. 439, note. 



IfCuvier, Mem. du Mus., i. 1815, p. 316. 



f Mr. Tempi ton. in 1837, announced that " the only specimen (of O. imberbe) I have observed, 

 was thrown on jhe shores of Belfast Lough, near the White House Point, on January 9, 1809. It 

 was a large specimen, not less than a foot long, and agreed so exactly with the figure in the British 

 Zoology, and differed so much from that of Mr. Montague (Wern. Mem., p. 95, pi. 4), that I am led 

 to believe there are two distinct species, of which Pennant has described one and Montague the 

 other." Mag. Nat. Hist, N. S., i. 412. Mr. Thompson (N. H. Ireland, iv. 1850, p. 233), was unable 

 to gain further information. If the specimen was not a thick eel, it may have been a Zoarces 

 viviparus. 



llf Lncyc. Meth. Hist. Nat., iii. PoissoDS, p. 212. 



1864.] 



