2 66 PAPERS FROM TORTUGAS LABORATORY vol. xxxiv 



Blennius marmoreus Poey 



}Blennius jttcortim Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. nat. poiss., vol. n, 1836, p. 263, pi. 



324 — 249 miles south of the Azores. 

 Blennius marmoreus Poey, Enumeratio, 1875, p. 130 — Cuba. 

 Blennius stearnsi Jordan and Gilbert, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 5, 1882 (1883), p. 300— 



Snapper Banks. 

 Blennius favosus Goode and Bean, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 5, 1882 (1883), p. 416 — 



Garden Key, Florida. 

 Blennius pilicornis 1 Garman (not of Cuvier and Valenciennes). Bull. Lab. Nat. Sci. Univ. 



Iowa, vol. 4, 1896, p. 89 — Tortugas, Florida. 



This small bottom-haunting fish is sparsely but widely distributed at Tortugas 

 where suitable cover occurs. Rocky tracts, especially if strewn with dead corals 

 perforated by boring bivalves, are likely to harbor it, and it may be found where 

 a single rock lies in sand, or a single coral head in turtle grass, if there is shelter 

 beneath it. It was also seen among the exposed roots of Thalassia about the 

 margins of sandy-bottomed holes, or among coral stacks, where it creeps by 

 preference over their dead and caverned surfaces. Usually it finds its shelter 

 ready made; but it may excavate and carry out sand with its mouth, or it may 

 drive the sand out by lying close under a stone vibrating its body rapidly. 



Below are entered the fin formulas of the types and cotypes of Blennius favosus 

 and B. stearnsi. As will be observed, they are in general agreement. The range 

 of variation in either group falls well within that of 26 Tortugas specimens pre- 

 sented for comparison. In other respects these types agree well with one another. 

 Nothing more than differences in age, size, and sex, transitory differences in 

 color or pattern, and the accidents of preservation distinguish them. Blennius 

 favosus, then, seems clearly a synonym of B. stearnsi. Two type specimens of B. 

 favosus, D. XII, 18 or 19; A. 11,20. Three type specimens of B. stearnsi, D. XI 

 or XII, 18 or 19; A. 11,19 or 20 - Twenty-six specimens of B. marmoreus from Tor- 

 tugas, D. XI or XII, 17 to 19; A. II,i8 to 21. 



To find in Poey's description of Blennius marmoreus justification for reducing 

 B. stearnsi itself to synonymy is not simple. In B. marmoreus the depth is stated 

 to go 5 times, the head 4.5 times in total length, and the eye 2 times in postorbital 

 part of head. In a specimen of B. stearnsi, 61 mm. in total length, the correspond- 

 ing measures are depth 5.0, head 4.3, eye 2.0, which is in close accord. The agree- 

 ment is complete with respect to the location of the eyes near the profile and to 

 each other; the profile falling steeply away before the eye; the presence of a 

 single multifid superciliary tentacle; and the absence of all nuchal cirri. The 

 trimness of the build, the small head, the yellow-brown color which is more 

 intense on the upper half of the body, the marbled pattern with an abundance of 

 closely approximated dark spots, the yellow fins, the form of the dorsal, all sup- 

 port the inference that the two are one. There is no mention of a nasal cirrus, nor 

 of a semiocellate black spot on the dorsal, nor of other small dark spots on the 

 fin. For these omissions the small size of the type specimen may afford an ex- 

 planation, and also to some extent for the fin formula (D. XII,2o; A. II, 16), 

 which departs decidedly from expectation. 



1 This name should have been written Blennius filicorms, and is so entered in the register 

 in the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle. — W. H. L. 



