344 XEW YOKK STATE AiUSElUM 



round. I have successfully raised this fish to nearly mature 

 growth. (After Eugene Smith^) 



The remarkable spinning habits of this fish have been 

 described by Prof. John A. Eyder in the bulletin of the U. S. 

 Fish Commission for 1881. 



Family kistulariidae: 



Cornet Fishes 



Genus fistll-aria Linnaeus 



Body extremely elongate, much depressed, broader than deep;^ 

 scaleless, but having bony plates present on various parts of the 

 body, mostly covered by the skin; head very long, the anterior 

 bones of the skull much produced, forming a long tube, which 

 terminates in the narrow month, this tube formed by the sym- 

 plectic, proethmoid, metapterygoid, mesopterygoid, quadrate,^ 

 palatines, vomer, and mesethmoid; both jaws, and usually the 

 vomer and palatines also, with minute teeth; membrane uniting 

 the bones of the tube below, very lax, so that the tube is capable 

 of much dilation; post-temporal coossified with the cranium; 

 branchiostegals five to seven; gills four, a slit behind the fourth; 

 gill membranes separate, free from the isthmus, gill rakers 

 obsolete; basibranchial elements wanting, pseudobranchiae 

 wanting; air bladder large; spinous dorsal fin entirely 

 absent, soft dorsal short, posterior, somewhat elevated;, 

 anal fin opposite it and similar; caudal fin forked, the 

 middle rays produced into a long filament ; pectorals small, with 

 a broad base, preceded by a smooth area as in Gasterosteidae,. 

 pectoral ossicles 3; interclavicles greatly lengthened, supra- 

 clavicles very small; ventral fins very small, wide apart, abdom- 

 inal (through partial atrophy of the girdle, by which they lose 

 connection with the interclavicles), far in advance of the dorsal, 

 composed of six soft rays; pyloric caeca few; intestine short;, 

 vertebrae very numerous (4-f44 to 49-1-28 to 33), the first four ver- 

 tebrae very long. Fishes of the tropical seas, related to the 



^Linn. Soc. N. Y. Pfoo. 1897. no. 9, p. 31. 



