46 CENTROPRISTES ATRARIUS. 



General Remarks. This animal, it appears to me, is the Perca atraria of 

 Linnaeus, which, he says, was sent him from Charleston, by Dr. Garden, who 

 called it Black-fish ; a name in fact applied to it from the earliest settlement of 

 our State. Nor is there any other fish of this same colour, with which it could 

 possibly be confounded, the Tautoga Americana excepted ; but this animal was not 

 introduced to our waters until about fifty years since.* 



In 1788, SchoepflFf described a fish that he found in the waters of New York, 

 there called, as he says, " Sea Bass or Blackfish" and which he supposed to be 

 an undescribed species, for he observes, — " The Carolina Blackfish of Dr. Garden, 

 or Perca atraria, L., seems in some particulars to approach near it ; but in the 

 number and character of its fin-rays is widely diff'erent." This fish of Schoepff 

 is also the Coryphana nigrescens of Bloch ; the Perca varia of Mitchill ; and 

 the Centropristes nigricans of Cuvier and Valenciennes, which they describe as 

 identical with the Perca atraria of Linnaeus, and in this they have been followed 

 by all our ichthyologists. In fact, these two fishes are so much alike in form, col- 

 our, &c., as hardly to be distinguished at first sight ; yet they are not only diff'erent 

 animals, but have an entirely diff'erent geographical distribution ; the one inhabits 

 the waters north of Cape Hatteras, while the other is only found south of it. The 

 external mark most to be relied on, in determining these species, is the compara- 

 tive length of the pectoral fin, which is longer than the ventral in the Southern 

 species, and coterminal with it in the Northern. But the most distinctive char- 

 acter is found in the shape of the air-bladder, which is always sacculated in the 

 Centropristes atrarius, and never in the Centropristes nigricans. 



* In the year 1800, General Thomas Pinckney imported from Rhode Island several hundred Tautog, together 

 with many Lobsters. These he distributed in the sea at the eastern extremity of Sullivan's Island ; the lobsters 

 soon died out, but the fish increased and multiplied, and are now common, though not abundant. 



f Schrift. der Gesells. Nat. Freund., b. viii. st. 2, p. 164. 



