24 PERCID.E. 



except the first, being a little produced or drawn out into filaments. Its spines 

 are very strong, without distinct appendages or filaments. The web of the soft- 

 rayed part is scaled a little way up between the rays, but less distinctly than in 

 the corresponding part of the dorsal fin. 



The pectoral fins are ovate, scarcely so long as the head, with lines of scales run- 

 ning a considerable distance up between the rays ; of which, the two first, though 

 barred or articulated, are simple or unbranched. The web of these fins is pellucid, 

 and extremely delicate and fragile ; so that the ends of the rays are generally 

 partly free. The lower rays are also somewhat fleshy in the middle, and very 

 thickly barred or ringed : presenting some analogy with the ScorpoenidcB. 



The ventral fins, placed just beneath the pectoral, are very long ; their tip 

 reaching considerably beyond the end of the base of the anal fin, and some- 

 times quite to the base of the caudal fin. Varying a little in this respect, they 

 may be said, generally, to equal half the length from the tip of the muzzle, 

 to the middle of the fork of the caudal fin. When collapsed, as when the fish is 

 out of the water, these fins appear finely acuminate : but when expanded care- 

 fully in M^ater, their tips are found to be really more or less obtuse or rounded ; 

 varying o^ten in degree on the two sides of the same individual ; and with the 

 web between the extremities of the branches of the rays generally torn. The 

 outline traced out, however, by the projecting tips of these is always rounded. 

 The branches of the first, second, and third soft rays, are nearly equally produced ; 

 but the second is a little the longest. Their web is perfectly naked. 



Caudal fin between forked and lunate ; the lobes conspicuously produced into 

 filaments by the prolongation of their four first branched rays, chiefly of the second 

 and third; the lower fork, or filament, contrary to Callanthias, being consider- 

 ably longer than the upper. The web between the rays is thickly scaled a long 

 way up, in imbricated lines of fine, small, oblong scales, almost concealing the 

 rays, which are much crowded, and difficult to reckon towards the outside of the 

 forks. 



Colour fine pink or rosy, with a lilac tint ; mottled along the ridge of the back 

 with indistinct spots of dusky olive-yellow, which extend a little way down the 

 sides, but grow paler, and presently blend into a yellow tint. Towards the belly 

 pearly-whitish, iridescent. 



Sides of the head rosy, with three yellow or olive-yellow horizontal bands ; one 

 close above, another through the middle of the eye, ending between the two lower 

 spines of the opercle ; the third under the eye, and ending in a yellow spot or 

 patch at the base of the pectoral fins. The lips are rosy. The iris chiefly pale- 

 violet or lilac, on a silver ground. The dorsal and anal fins are rosy along their 

 base, bordered with yellow ; the lacinice of the formel" yellow. The pectoral fins 

 are pale scarlet rather than rosy. The produced fore-part of the ventral fins is 

 bright yellow, orange towards the tip : their spine or fore-edge pink or rosy ; their 

 hind-part white, beautifully spotted with yellow. The caudal fin is yellow, with 

 the outer edges pink ; the filaments and middle often orange. 



I have been tlius circumstantial in the description of this common 

 species, not merely for the sake of contrast with Callanthias; but be- 

 cause it is precisely in these " common species" of a place that similarity 

 is most frequently mistaken for identity. - The Atlantic fish appears,' 

 however, not to differ from MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes's description 

 of the rarer Mediterranean, except in the rather longer ventral fins, and 

 in the scaliness of the soft-rayed portions of the dorsal and anal fins ; 



