I 3 2 



PAPERS FROM TORTUGAS LABORATORY vol. xxxiv 



They feed by day. Crabs and many other forms are included in their dietary. 

 They are always interested in the possibilities that arise with the overturning of 

 a stone, and hence, within limits, may be enticed into any desired surroundings. 



The species is very changeable in coloration. It usually was seen on the reef in 

 a gray phase with a yellow wash, from the snout to the fore part of the dorsal. 

 The eye is wholly yellow except for a black bar of the width of the pupil extend- 

 ing vertically across it. Over bare sand or white rocky bottom the yellow may be 

 almost entirely suppressed. Over bottom covered with brown algae the fish is 

 olivaceous. It was occasionally seen in a banded phase, sometimes on the bottom, 

 sometimes above gorgonians. Fish which had stopped to feed and fish resting in 

 tanks sometimes showed it too. It includes an ocular stripe and six or seven others 

 crossing the body behind it. 



The young differ sufficiently from older fish to make it necessary to have a 

 series of graded sizes before it is possible at first to associate the two. The young 

 lack the net of blue about golden spots on the cheek, which readily identifies 

 them later. The yellow wash they display in some phases is not so definitely 

 anterodorsal as it becomes with age, and their profile is not steep enough to 

 betray them. 



Blue markings on the head include a suborbital line, a horizontal preorbital 

 line, two rows of blue spots crossing the interorbital, a narrow blue line crossing 

 nape, and sometimes a blue line along base of dorsal fin. All these may be sup- 

 pressed. The smallest fish have three definite dark crossbars on ventral fin, later 

 becoming irregularly marked, and the body may be much speckled with small 

 dark dots. 



Without the young of other species for comparison it is impossible to know 

 which juvenile characters are specific, but the proportionate lengths of ist dorsal 

 and 3d anal spines seem to remain fairly constant and to resemble those of the 

 adult Calamus calamus rather than those of C. bajonado. 



Atlantic coast of tropical America to Florida and sometimes to North Carolina. 



W. H. L. 



Calamus bajonado (Bloch and Schneider). Grass porgy 



This fish may be seen not infrequently in schools of up to a dozen in the 

 neighborhood of the greater coral patches far up Loggerhead reef, also halfway 

 to the reef off the Laboratory dock, as much over sandy bottom as over grass. I 

 also observed a small school feeding by day on sand near a grassy bank off the 

 west shore of Loggerhead Key. 



In feeding, it takes much sand in its mouth and rejects the greater part of 

 what has been taken. 



Its profile is much more evenly rounded than that of Calamus calamus, and it 

 reaches a larger size. 



Its coloration is changeable. I recognize three phases. The commonest is a com- 

 bination of gray and yellow about like that of C. calamus, but differently dis- 

 tributed. In the latter the yellow is anterodorsal, fading out posteriorly and 

 ventrally. In C. bajonado it is dorsal, fading out ventrally. The second phase is 

 clear gray, and is shown over clear sand, certainly if the fish is near bottom. The 



