Dr. A. Giinther on the History of Echeneis. 393 



latter author has been extensively copied by Shaw (Zool. iv. 

 p. 202, pi. 31), and he too gives an English translation of the 

 passage in Pliny. The drawings accompanying all these ac- 

 counts were more or less rough and imperfect ; and it is Blu- 

 menbach's and llosenthaPs merit to have given for the first time 

 figures which may be called scientific representations of the fish 

 and of its skeleton (Abbildungen, taf. 78, and Eosenth. Ich- 

 thyotom. Tafeln, taf. 20. figs. 1-8). 



Risso adds nothing to our knowledge of the habits * of the 

 fish, but, in the ' Histoire Naturelle de 1'Europe Meridionale* 

 (iii. p. 270) he describes a remarkable variety, or even species, 

 from the Mediterranean, with a sucker composed of twenty la- 

 mina?, a number which I have never met with. He separates 

 this fish from the E. remora, L., and applies to it the name of 

 E. naucrates ; it is, however, evident that ftisso did not know 

 the true E. naucrates ; and his fish must be closely allied to E. 

 remora, having twenty-two rays in the dorsal and anal fins. I 

 have mentioned above, that Bloch also admits that the laminai 

 vary from sixteen to twenty in E. remora. 



An attempt to distinguish new specific forms from the Lin- 

 nsean E. remora has been made by Lowef. He found that the 

 lunate caudal was not a character common to all specimens, and 

 that, moreover, in some the tongue was covered with asperities, 

 and in others smooth. He called those with a truncated caudal 

 Echeneis jacob&a, and those with a rough tongue Echeneis pal- 

 lida, considering the specimens with lunate caudal and smooth 

 tongue as E. remora, L. Having had apparently but few speci- 

 mens for examination, he was induced to use differences in the 

 number of the laminae of the sucker as additional specific cha- 

 racters. But the difference between the extreme forms of the 

 caudal fin is not great: every possible degree of emargina- 

 tion between those extremes may be observed ; the most deeply 

 notched caudal and the most truncated one do not correspond 

 with a certain number of lamina? ; the caudal, in fact, never has 

 a posterior margin which forms a straight vertical line; and, 

 finally, the same fin undergoes, with age, the greatest changes 

 possible in E. naucrates, as we shall see afterwards. The struc- 

 ture of the surface of the tongue has no more specific value than, 

 the form of the caudal. Specimens with distinct asperities on 

 the tongue are comparatively scarce; this character is merely 



* He describes them in rather general terms, and it may be interesting 

 to quote his own words : " Plus inertes qu'entreprenants, ils n'ont que des 

 desirs moderes ; plus indolents que courageux, ils se fixent sur les quilles, 

 ou autour des batimens, et trainent ainsi une vie langoureuse et miserable." 

 E. remora, Risso, Ichth. Nice, p. 177, and Eur. Me'rid. hi. p. 269. E* 

 naucrates, Risso, Eur. Merid. iii. p. 270. 



f Proc. Zool. Soc. 1839, p. 89. 



