352 Dr. Richardson's Contributions to 



XLIX. — Contributions to the Ichthyology of Australia. By 

 John Richardson, M.D., F.R.S., &c, Inspector of 

 Hospitals, Haslar. 



[Continued from p. 182.] 



Batrachus diemensis (Le Sueur}), Tasmanian Frog-fish. 



No. 34. Mr. Gilbert's list. 

 Mr. Gilbert says that " this fish is an inhabitant of the mud 

 at the head of the harbour of Port Essington, where it may be 

 frequently seen creeping over the surface when the tide has 

 left. It is very difficult to capture, for on the slightest ap- 

 pearance of danger it plunges down instantaneously ." 



Not having at hand the journal of the Academy of Science 

 of Philadelphia, in which M. Le Sueur describes the Batrachus 

 diemensis, I am unable to affirm the correctness of the desig- 

 nation which I have given to Mr. Gilbert's specimen. The 

 diemensis is quoted in the c Histoire des Poissons' as a syno- 

 nym of the quadrispinis of that work, and with this the Port 

 Essington fish agrees in having two spines on the suboper- 

 culum similar to the opercular ones; but quadrispinis has 

 three spines in the first dorsal, its markings are described as 

 merely crowded dots on a pale ground, and nothing is said of 

 the finely streaked and reticulated arrangement of the pale 

 tint on the upper surface of the body, and in the axilla of the 

 pectoral, which exists in Mr. Gilbert's fish. The figure of 

 Lophius dubius in White's ' Voyage to Botany Bay,' which is 

 referred by Cuvier to Batrachus dussumieri, is so bad, that the 

 only mode of discovering what it was intended for is a careful 

 comparison of all the species which frequent Port Jackson. 



Teeth all very short, appearing conical and acute under the mi- 

 croscope, but to the naked eye forming villiform bands. The band is 

 broadest at the symphysis of the lower jaw, but laterally and on the 

 intermaxillaries it is reduced to a single, or at most a double row of 

 teeth. On the vomer and palatine bones the dental stripe is three 

 or four rows deep, and it widens posteriorly. The lower lip is fringed 

 with short, thick filaments ; there are a few on the maxillary ; one 

 small one projects from the membrane on each side of the snout over 

 the limb of the intermaxillary, and about five somewhat larger ones 

 mark out the edge of the preoperculum. The upper edge of the orbit 

 is furnished with a short palmated filament, and there is a smaller 

 simple one further back. One row of pores with tumid lips runs 

 above the orbit, and another below it : they meet behind, pass 

 on in a single line to the nape, and thence with a slight arching to 

 the end of the soft dorsal. A second row commencing before the 

 ventrals, runs under the pectoral to the end of the anal ; a third 

 one, not so crowded and less complete, maybe detected on the mid- 

 dle of the side ; and a few pores are scattered over the body. When 



