130 SCOMBRID/E. 



Mullets (Mugiles) : and adds that on account of its uniform blackness, 

 and the black longitudinal lines from the gill-openings to the tail-fin, 

 which, according to MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes, are observable in 

 their dried specimens, he has called it Mugil niger. In this idea he 

 was followed by Aldrovandi ; who, according to MM. Cuvier and Va- 

 lenciennes, for I have not access to his work, figures the same fish under 

 the name of Corvus niloticus, supposing his example to have come from 

 Egypt. His representation is described by MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes 

 to be much superior to that of the Provencal Ichthyologist. 



The rarity of this most curious fish may be collected from the fact, 

 that from this latter period to the beginning of the present century, an 

 interval of two hundred years, it had entirely escaped fresh observation : 

 and was perhaps on this account wholly neglected by Linnreus, and the 

 system-framers of the Eighteenth Century, though Willughby* had given 

 both an abstract of Rondelet's account, and a copy of his figure. It is 

 singular that its rediscovery, after so long an interval, should have been 

 made in that very country to which its first observer had remarked it was 

 unknown ; and by his countryman. In 1810 Risso, the well-known Ich- 

 thyologist of Nice, again supplied a brief but original description ; and 

 established it as a genus under the name of Tetragomirus Cuvieri. And in 

 his Histoire Naturelle, he has subsequently raised this genus to the rank of a 

 Family (Les Tetragonuridcs), which he places in immediate proximity to 

 his Mugilidcc. MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes, describing it again in 1836 

 in the eleventh volume of their Histoire, with their accustomed accurate 

 fulness of detail, have placed it also, as it had been previously placed by 

 Cuvier in the Regno Animal, in a separate chapter at the end of the 

 Mugilid(B. 



Five or six examples only seem to have occurred of this fish, besides 

 the two described by Rondelet and Aldrovandi : and these were taken at 

 Nice, Genoa, and Toulon. " Another proof of its rarity in the Medi- 

 terranean," add MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes, " is, that it is neither 

 mentioned in the works of Rafiuesque and of the Prince of Musignano, 

 nor makes part of the collections formed by M. Savigny." At Nice 

 its common name appears to be Courpata^ or the Raven. 



It was, therefore, with peculiar satisfaction that I recognised at once 

 in a fish brought to me, in June 1838, a true example of a genus, which, 

 from the mere description in the Regne Animal, I previously had so 

 little understood as to refer to it, though not without a mark of hesi- 

 tation, a fish rather rcferrible to Thyrsites, Cuvier ; namely, Aplurus 

 simplex^ supra t. 18. An approach, however, to the right position in 

 the system of the true Tetragonurus was indicated by this very error : 

 for the Madeiran fishermen, by calling it a kind of Escolar, ai)pcar to 

 have a more just notion of its true affinity than the above-cited Ich- 



* Iclitli. p. 27fi. t. R. 4. f. -i. 



