2 88 PAPERS FROM TORTUGAS LABORATORY vol. xxxiv 



Balistes vetula Linnaeus. Queen triggerfish 



(Plate 33, figure i ) 



This fish is rare in shallow water during the summer months, although Jordan 

 and Thompson (Bull. U. S. Bur. Fish., vol. 24, 1904 (1905), p. 249) reported it 

 as being often taken at Tortugas by Cuban fishing smacks. 



In its commonest color phase it is olive green posterodorsally, becoming 

 golden yellow on throat and breast, with a light blue line bordering each lip 

 posteriorly, joining behind angle of mouth a broad line of the same color ex- 

 tending to a point beneath gill opening; a second broader line of the same color 

 above concurrent with the first, extending from snout to base of pectoral, where 

 it curves broadly downward; caudal peduncle encircled by a broad band of 

 somewhat lighter blue; dorsal, anal, and caudal fins more or less conspicuously 

 marked with blue; base of anal and sides just above it with a coarse network of 

 darker blue; a series of broken brown lines, usually separated by three rows of 

 scales, sloping downward and backward from bases of dorsal fins over postero- 

 dorsal quarter of body; a system of blue-black lines or dots, narrowly margined 

 with yellow, about eye. 



Fish resting in a tank frequently showed a blotched phase in which light areas 

 behind the eye and pectoral fin, and below the interspace between the dorsal 

 fins, may foreshadow such a banded phase as appears in Balistes capriscus. If 

 one's hand be placed on the fish, all the green and gold of its ground color is 

 replaced by pale gray. The brown stripes of its posterodorsal region disappear, 

 and the lines about the eye become pale blue narrowly margined by greenish 

 yellow. On alga-covered bottom in its richly colored phase it seemed most aptly 

 to repeat the color of its surroundings. A fish in grayer setting among massive 

 dead and broken or eroded corals was clouded or blotched and lacked its 

 brighter hues. Another was very pale when swimming in the open over white 

 bottom. W. H. L. 



The collection contains only 2 specimens, 70 and 302 mm. long. Although the 

 caudal fin is lunate, with both upper and lower angles produced, in B. capriscus 

 as well as this species, the produced rays (2d from above and 2d from below) 

 are much longer in the present one. A difference in the shape of the caudal is 

 plainly evident in specimens 70 mm. long. At that size the caudal fin in B. 

 capriscus is evenly and broadly convex, whereas in B. vetula it already is dis- 

 tinctly concave, though the angles are not yet produced. The soft dorsal has 29 

 and 30, and the anal 27 and 28 rays in the 2 specimens at hand. 



The various stripes about the head and on the body that occur in adults are 

 already present in the 70-mm. specimen. 



Tropical Atlantic, ranging northward on the coast of the United States to or 

 beyond North Carolina. S. F. H. 



Canthidermis sp. 



Two small specimens of Canthidermis, 35 and 43 mm. long, were taken, one 

 along shore, the other at sea. Whether they represent C. sttfflamen or C. sobaco, 

 if the two are distinct, is uncertain. 



