136 ALLAN HANCOCK PACIFIC EXPEDITIONS VOL. 9 



separates the type localities of this species and its northern relative, it is 

 wholly possible that nocturnus will eventually prove to be merely a 

 subspecies of nepenthe. 



Notes on the type locality. — The matter of the type locality of N. 

 nocturnus has mildly disturbed us. We know from our North Chincha 

 specimen that nocturnus is an inhabitant of the cold coastal waters of 

 Peru, yet the main type series bears only the locality datum, "Guayaquil, 

 Ecuador." It is, of course, evident that the fish were not taken in the 

 perfectly fresh tropical Guayas River at Guayaquil, but must have been 

 brought up to Guayaquil by fishermen and obtained in the fish market 

 there by Dr. Schmitt. To the experienced collector the Guayaquil speci- 

 mens look like market fish, long dead before preservation. But the Guayas 

 Estuary is wholly within the tropical Panamanian zoogeographical re- 

 gion, and the cold-water fauna of the Humboldt Current is not usually 

 encountered until one is south of Sechura Bay and Cape Aguja in Peru 

 (see Myers, 1941). Unless N. nocturnus moves at will across this sharp 

 faunal and oceanographic break, it would seem likely that the Guayaquil 

 types were taken by fishermen far south of the Guayas Estuary or far 

 enough out to sea to be within the influence of the Humboldt Current. 

 Or perhaps the fluctuations of the ocean currents occasionally bring cold 

 water into the Estuary (see Schweigger, 1941). Be this as it may, the 

 senior author obtained a number of marine and brackish water fishes in 

 the Guayaquil fish market, during the 1938 cruise of the Velero III. 

 Most of them must have been caught a considerable distance down the 

 Estuary, but the size of the fishing boats then supplying the market did 

 not make it seem likely that many fishes were brought from as far as 

 the open ocean. 



3. A NEW GENUS FOR MENIDIA STARKSI 

 FROM PANAMA 



Genus GOLEOTROPIS, new 



Genotype. — Menidia starksi Meek and Hildebrand. 



Meek and Hildebrand's description of Menidia starksi appeared in 

 1923, but they remarked in a footnote that their manuscript was com- 

 pleted prior to the publication of Jordan and Hubbs' 1919 review of the 

 Atherinidae, and that they did not attempt to bring their arrangement of 

 the Panama Atherinids into accord with Jordan and Hubbs' classifica- 



