252 PAPERS FROM TORTUGAS LABORATORY vol. xxxiv 



membranes seem sparsely spotted with light on a dark ground, rather than finely 

 netted with brown about light spots. But a female from Tortugas shows a spotted 

 pattern intermediate in texture between that of the Cuban specimens and others 

 of the usual appearance, which makes it seem doubtful whether L. microlepidotus 

 may be definitely recognizable even as a color variety. 



Between the eastern Atlantic form, represented in the British Museum collec- 

 tion by specimens from Madeira, Cape Verde Islands, and the Gold Coast, and 

 the typical form from the western Atlantic there seems to be no significant dif- 

 ference in gill rakers, scales, or fin supports. The eastern Clinus canariensis 

 Valenciennes (see citation above) may be a fish of smaller size. It differs from 

 the western form chiefly in the coloration of the female, which in the latter has 

 a finer reticulate pattern on cheek and throat, more rows of smaller spots on the 

 fins — especially on the pectorals — and a distinctive reticulum of dark lines about 

 light spots on the pectoral base posteriorly. A specimen in the British Museum 

 from South Trinidad may represent another recognizably distinct stock. 



Coming from under ledges this fish may be almost black, but in the open it 

 tends to show in the mottled brown, gray, and green of its irregularly banded 

 pattern the colors of alga-covered rocks. It is paler over light bottom than dark, 

 and paler too at night than during the day. 



Differences in the external genitalia of the sexes are evident before the fish 

 have attained half adult size. Their darker color, their suffusion with red, espe- 

 cially ventrally, and their ocelli serve also to distinguish the males. 



The head of a female 140 mm. long is represented in plate 30, figure 2. If the 

 fish rolls the eye widely it shows about half the patterned surface of the eye in a 

 position of rest. Strong lines of the extraocular pattern extending on the eye and 

 the iris carry the general pattern to the pupillary border. W. H. L. 



Represented in the collection by 6 large specimens, 128 to 157 mm. long. The 

 following proportions and enumerations are based on 2 specimens, 155 and 157 

 mm. in length: Head 3.1, 3.3; depth 3.4, 3.4. Eye in head 4.9, 4.6; snout 3.2, 3.1; 

 maxillary 2.0, 2.0; pectoral 1.4, 1.25. D. XVIII,i2, XVII,n; A. 11,19, 11,19; P. 14, 

 14; scales 65, 68. 



A widely distributed species, known on the American coast from Brazil to the 

 West Indies, the Bahamas, and the south Atlantic states. S. F. H. 



Labrisomus kalisherae (Jordan) 



Ericteis kalisherae Jordan, Bull. U. S. Fish Comm., vol. 22, 1902 (1904), p. 543, pi. 2, fig. 



4 — Tortugas, Florida. Jordan and Thompson, Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 24, 1904 (1905), 



p. 254. 

 Clinus buccijerus Metzelaar (part not of Poey), Trop. atl. Vissch., 1919, p. 154. 

 Labrisomus buccijerus Longley (part not of Poey), Carnegie Inst. Wash. Year Book No. 



3 1 , I93 2 , P- 300. 



Not rare at Tortugas. It may be obtained most readily by picking up and 

 breaking to pieces in a tub clumps of branching Porites from the inner margin 

 of Bird Key reef. In deeper water it is not uncommon under pieces of dead coral, 

 and may be seen too at times slipping in and out of crevices in Orbicellas. 



Except for a specimen from British Honduras registered as Labrisomus nuchi- 



