2 86 PAPERS FROM TORTUGAS LABORATORY vol. xxxiv 



Family BALISTIDAE. Triggerfishes 



Balistes capriscus Gmelin. Leatherjacket 



Balistes carolinensis Gmelin, Syst. nat., vol. i, 1788, p. 1468 — Carolinas. 



Balistes capriscus 1 Gmelin, ibid., p. 1471 — Indian and American oceans (after Gronow). 



Balistes powelli Cope, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1870, p. 120 — Newport, Rhode 



Island. 

 Balistes moribundus Cope, Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc, vol. 14, 1871, p. 479 — St.-Martin, 



West Indies. 

 Balistes forcipatus Jordan and Evermann (part not of Gmelin), Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 



47, Pt- 2, 1898, p. 1702. 



Adults have been noticed rarely, and only about the greatest shoal toward the 

 upper end of Loggerhead bank. The young, to 100 mm. in length, are common 

 in floating Sargassum and about bits of waste in the drift. Some young were 

 observed accompanying a piece of bamboo, in the hollow of which they hid 

 when alarmed. 



Grown fish observed from below, swimming high in the water, were largely 

 gray and inconspicuous, but the species, according to Townsend (13th Ann. 

 Rept. New York Zool. Soc, 1909, p. 26), is highly changeable in coloration. 

 Some of its phases are well shown by the young. In the Sargassum these are 

 clouded yellow-olive finely marbled and spotted with light blue points, some of 

 which appear even on the iris. In aquarium tanks by day they are almost black, 

 but by night they are black and gray, the darker areas being the same as in the 

 clouded olive phase. The first dark shade is under the spinous dorsal; two under 

 the soft dorsal, and a band across the caudal peduncle, and in some specimens a 

 blotch at base of caudal. 



The variation in fin supports in a sample of 21 from several localities is, D. 

 111,27 to 2 9'-> A. 23 to 26. The commonest combination is D. 111,27; A. 24. This, 

 and not D. 111,26; A. 22, as is stated in the original description, is the fin formula 

 of the type of Balistes powelli. That of B. moribund us is correctly recorded as 

 D. 111,29; A. 2 6- It is less representative than the other, but occurs twice in a 

 small sample of 21 specimens. 



Something of the color pattern remains in the type specimens mentioned in 

 the preceding paragraph to affiliate them with B. capriscus. In the smaller one 

 {moribundus) the spinules on the scales are fewer than in the larger one 

 {powelli) and the spinule at the anterior margin of the scale more conspicuously 

 exceeds the others in height and strength; but at the same sizes the same differ- 

 ence appears in B. capriscus, with which there can be no doubt these are identical. 



Apart from Cope's specimens, as viewed by Jordan and Evermann, I have 

 noticed no record on which the occurrence of Balistes forcipatus in the West 

 Indies and northward may be postulated. Of a scaleless groove "before the eye 

 below the nostril," as Jordan and Evermann have it in their description of the 

 genus Balistes, I find no trace in B. capriscus or in B. vetula. W. H. L. 



The collection contains many specimens ranging in length from 30 to 90 mm., 

 and 1 of 265 mm. 



1 This name was preferred by the first reviser. — W. H. L. 



