5^ 



52d Species. Blackheaded Fat-head. Pime/i/iales pro* 

 vielas. Pimephale tete-noire. 



Diameter one fourth of the length, body olivaceous silvery, 

 head blackish, snout truncated, and with soft warts: fins whi- 

 tish, dorsal with a large irregular black spot at the anterior base, 

 with eight forked rays, and one simple shorter obtuse hard: a- 

 nal with eight rays; lateral line flexuosc and raised at the base, 

 tail lunulate. 



A small fish tlu'cc inches long. It is rare and hardly kno\vh 

 by the anglers. I describe it from a specimen taken with a hook 

 baited with earth-worm, by Mr. William M. Clifford, in a pond 

 near Lexington, in the month of April 1820, and now preserved 

 in the Museum in Lexington. Its head is very remarkable, 

 .soft and fat all over, the snout sloping, broad, truncate with soft 

 warts in front, mouth at its inferior extremity very small, ellipti- 

 cal transversal, with equal circular hard lips. The whole head 

 and even the eyes are of dusky and bluish black colour. Pec- 

 toral fins trapezoidal with 15 rays, the upper rays of the colour 

 of the head. Tail olivaceous lunuiated, with 20 forked rays and 

 5 short simple rays on each side of the base. Abdominal fins 

 quadranguia\\ The first ray of the dorsal is singular, thick, 

 short, hard, and yet blunt, almost cartilaginous, or not proper- 

 ly spinous, and not at all serrate as in the Carps. Scales pret- 

 ty large. 



XX Genus. Sucker. Catostomus. Catost5me. 

 Body oblong cylindrical scaly. Vent posterior or nearer to 

 the tail. Head and opercules scaleless and smooth. Mouth 

 beneath the &nout, with fleshy, thick, or lobed sucking lips; 

 Jaws toothless and retractible. Throat with pectinated teeth. 

 Nostrils double. Gill-cover double or triple. Three branch'dl 

 rays to the gill membrane. A single dorsal fin commonly op- 

 posite to the abdominal fins, which have from eight to ten raya^ 

 Lesueur has established this genus, in the first volume of the 

 Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia^. 

 Nvith all the American species of the genus Cyfirinus which 

 have the above characters, and he has described eighteen spe- 

 cies belonging to it. I have discovered twelve additional new 



species in the waters of the Ohio, where about sixteen new spe- 



G 



