162 PAPERS FROM TORTUGAS LABORATORY vol. xxxiv 



It sometimes is gray, with clouds of dark color forming irregular bands of 

 clove brown or raw umber, which may include a vertical bar extending through 

 eye and on cheek; another under anterior half of spinous and a third one under 

 soft dorsal; pectorals, anal, and caudal all barred, ventrals largely brown; ventral 

 surface of jaws and throat, and pectoral base anteriorly and in axil with much 

 permanent and characteristic white spotting. It is very variable, however, and in 

 a moment it may change so that brown shades are dominant, and gray secondary. 

 In nature the fish rapidly adjusts itself to its surroundings. 



Four dermal cirri at snout, preorbital, and nuchal long and thin; supraorbital 

 cirrus reaching base of 3d dorsal spine, finely fringed on its posterior margin; 

 other cirri of head well developed; about 9 flattened, pinnate cirri, as long as 

 eye's diameter, along lateral-line scales at nearly equal intervals; body with many 

 more. 



Coronal spines missing; 2 pairs of humeral spines; each tympanic preceded by 

 a small divided postorbital spine; 2 or 3 spines on suborbital ridge, and an acces- 

 sory one at base of chief preopercular spine. 



Second anal spine about as long as 3d, and much stronger; pectoral rays 

 usually 17 or 18, occasionally 15, the upper one and all but the following 6 

 usually simple. 



Atlantic coast of tropical America to Florida, sometimes straying northward 

 to Cape Cod. W. H. L. 



Scorpaena inermis Cuvier and Valenciennes 



Scorpaena inermis Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. nat. poiss., vol. 4, 1829, p. 311 — Mar- 

 tinique. 



Scorpaena occipitalis Poey, Memorias, vol. 2, i860, p. 171 — Havana. Longley, Carnegie 

 Inst. Wash. Year Book No. 34, 1935, p. 284. 



Scorpaena albifimbria Metzelaar (not of Evermann and Marsh), Trop. atl. Vissch., 1919, 

 p. 144 — Curacao; Aruba. 



Scorpaena grandicornis Breder (not of Cuvier and Valenciennes), Bull. Bingham Oceanog. 

 Coll., vol. 1, art. 1, 1927, p. 82 — Royal Island, Bahamas, in 18 fathoms. 



The type 1 is 67 mm. in length (standard length 55 mm.); depth at dorsal 

 origin 18 mm. (3.1), thickness above pectorals 12 mm., head 28 mm. (2.0); eye 

 8.0 mm. (3.25 in head), interorbital width 2.0 mm.; the uppermost and lower 14 

 pectoral rays simple, the remaining 5 branched. 



Three spines on suborbital keel, including spine at preopercular angle with no 

 supplementary one at its base, extending halfway to opercular margin; 2 spines 

 at lower margin of preorbital; 4 on margin of preopercle, below the strong spine - 

 at its angle; preocular, supraocular, postocular, and a pair of coronal spines at 

 anterior border of the shallow occipital pit; another pair at posterior part of the 

 pit laterally, followed almost immediately by a 3d, and then by a 4th slightly 

 farther from mid-line; another spine lateral to the 4th; a pair of minute spines 

 behind eye, close together and before the fairly strong temporal spine; inter- 

 orbital groove deep, with an almost imperceptible pair of submedian ridges. 



A pair of cirri at anterior nostrils; another cirrus on posterior spine of pre- 



1 The type was examined by Dr. Longley in the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. — S. F. H. 



