528 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Figure 281. — Burrfish (Chilomycterus schoepfii), Connecticut. From Goode. Drawing by H. L. Todd. 



spines instead of being merely prickly. These 

 spines are sparsely scattered all over the trunk, 

 with about 9 or 10 from nose to tail along any 

 given line. Furthermore, the burrfish is oval in 

 outline, not fusiform like the puffer; the openings 

 of its nostrils are prolonged in a single tubular 

 tentacle; its bony jaw plates are not divided by a 

 median suture as they are in the puffer, hence each 

 jaw apparently is armed with a single very broad 

 incisor tooth instead of with two; the pectoral 

 fins are not only much larger than in the puffer 

 but their upper edge is level with the upper corner 

 of the gill openings in the burrfish (considerable 

 below it in the puffers) ; its eye is round, not oval; 

 and its anal fin is below the dorsal, not behind 

 the latter. We need only add that the soft dorsal 

 and anal fins (it has no spiny dorsal) are both 

 rounded, each has 10 to 12 rays; the caudal fin 

 is very narrow and round-tipped; the pectorals 

 are much broader than long, and there are no 

 ventral fins. 



Color. — The ground color varies from green to 

 olive or brownish above, with pale belly, usually 

 tinted with yellow or orange. The back and sides 

 are irregularly striped with olive brown, dusky, or 

 black lines, running downward and backward, 

 roughly parallel one with another. There is a 

 dark blotch on each side at the base of the dorsal 

 fin, a smaller one between the latter and the anal 

 fin, one above the base of each pectoral fin, and a 

 fourth close behind the latter. 



Size. — Length, to about 10 inches. 



General range. — Coast of the United States, 

 from Florida northward regularly about to New 

 York, occasionally to Cape Cod, and straying as 

 far as Massachusetts Bay; most plentiful from the 

 Carolinas southward. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The only 

 record of this southern fish north of the elbow of 

 Cape Cod is of one taken in Massachusetts Bay 

 many years ago u and another caught at West 

 Point, Maine, August 5, 1949. 16 



THE OCEAN SUNFISHES OR HEADFISHES. FAMILY MOLIDAE 



Although the ocean sunfishes are allied anatomi- 

 cally to the puffers and porcupine fishes, with 

 which they agree in the veiy small gill openings 

 and in the fusion of the teeth into a sort of bony 

 beak, they bear no resemblance whatever to them 

 in general appearance, for they appear to consist 

 of nothing but a "huge head to which the fins are 

 attached," as Jordan and Evermann 16 aptly 

 express it. They have no spiny dorsal fin; the 

 soft dorsal and anal fins are short and very high, 

 and they have no caudal peduncle. The caudal 

 fin, so short that it is apparently nothing more than 



a flap of skin, extends all around the rear outline 

 of the trunk. Corresponding to their extraordi- 

 nary conformation the sunfishes have only 16 or 17 

 vertebrae. 



All known members of the family are oceanic in 

 nature, and they are widely distributed in warm 

 seas. One (Mola mola, p. 529) is a rather frequent 



» This specimen, reported by Kendall (Occas. Paper, Boston Soc. Nat. 

 Hist., vol. 7, Pt. 8, 1908, p. 118) is (or was) in the collection of the Boston 

 Society of Natural History. 



" Taken in a flsh trap and reported by Scattergood, Trefethen, and Coffin 

 (Copeia, 1951, No. 4, p. 298). 



'• Bull. 47, U. S. Nat. Mus., Pt. 2, 189S, p. 1752. 



