I2 8 PAPERS FROM TORTUGAS LABORATORY vol. xxxiv 



A vernal breeding season is indicated by the fact that in the early summer the 

 very young are far more abundant than fish of larger sizes. 



Copepods provide much of the food. A thousand by estimate were taken from 

 the stomach of a 50-mm. fish. 



The young are very much like the grunts of the genus Haemulon in appear- 

 ance. They occur commonly in a gray phase with the various dark stripes of the 

 typical haemulid pattern well developed. The caudal spot is imperfectly double 

 or dumbbell-shaped, with its long axis horizontal. Large fish may be similarly 

 marked, or may lack the dark lines and caudal spot, in which case, except for 

 their countershading, they are uniform faint green-gray. Schools of young, up to 

 perhaps 100 mm. in length, have been seen in the gray phase high above the 

 corals in open water. They lacked the dark line, but not the caudal spot, and 

 when they returned to the coral heads they displayed again their common striped 

 pattern. On being transferred from a black to a white dish in the laboratory, 

 within 5 seconds the fish changed from its darkest color to its palest pearl gray. 



Atlantic coast of tropical America, sometimes straying northward at least as 

 far as North Carolina. W. H. L. 



Bathystoma striatum (Linnaeus) 



This species was reported from Tortugas by Jordan and Thompson (Bull. 

 U. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 24, 1904 (1905), p. 242). Dr. Longley apparently did not 

 find it there. 



It is easily distinguished from the other species of the genus by the smaller 

 scales, there being from 65 to 72 in a longitudinal series above the lateral line, 

 whereas the other two local species have only 50 to 60. From Bathystoma rimator 

 it differs prominently also in the much more elongate fusiform body, the depth 

 being contained about 3.4 to 3.8 times in the standard length. 



Brazil to Florida and Bermuda. S. F. H. 



Brachygenys chrysargyreus (Gunther) 



(Plate 16, figure 1) 



This species abounds about the corals, to which it holds more closely than do 

 some of its associates, notably Bathystoma rimator. It is particularly common in 

 the branching and tangled Acropora beds. Its widest excursions from such cover 

 by day are not often more than a very few yards. Some, however, have been seen 

 swimming high up in the water, feeding on the tideward side of the coral heads. 



The stomach of a fish feeding as described contained 21 copepods, an am- 

 phipod, an ostracod, and a crab zoea. It usually feeds by night, when it may be 

 taken in abundance at the shore, hundreds of yards from its nearest schooling 

 places. Stomachs of individuals so taken contained shrimps. 



The color pattern is a simple one of longitudinal bluish and bronze stripes. 

 They are lightest where most shaded by the rounded side of the body, and 

 darkest where most exposed. There are several minor stripes between the major 

 ones on the dorsal side, carrying out the scheme of countershading. A caudal 

 spot is sometimes visible; mouth with red lines; peritoneum black. This fish has 



