scarcely cvenated, semicircular edge, and a disk covered 

 wilh small scales. The surface of the coracoid bone is 

 partially scaly above the pectoral fin. It is not toothed. 

 The supra-scapular is not visible, nor is there a peculiar 

 row of scales crossing the nape, as in most of the Sparidai. 

 There is, however, a sudden transition from the small 

 scales which cover the hind head to the much larger ones 

 of the body, which are tiled in regular oblique rows. The 

 scales of the head are smallest on the snout. They are 

 pretty large on the under surface of the lower jaw, and on 

 the raaxillaries. 



The scales of the body have their exposed disks minutely 

 striated, with thin slightly undulated edges. They are 

 disposed in oblique rows, one of which that runs from the 

 fifth dorsal spine to the second anal ray, contains thirty 

 scales on a side, eleven of them above the lateral line. The 

 lateral line is very slightly arched, or almost straight, and 

 traverses forty-eight scales between the gill-opening and 

 the base of the caudal. Each of these scales has a simple 

 flat tube on the basal half of its disk, and many of them 

 are notched at the tip. The size of the scales diminishes 

 towards the top of the back ; there is a large patch of 

 smaller scales under the soft dorsal, and fillets of small 

 scales run up between the rays of that fin and of the anal. 

 The caudal is also clothed towards the base with small 

 scales. 



The gill-membrane is supported by seven flattish stout 

 rays, which decrease in size gradually towards the isthmus. 

 In a specimen preserved in the Haslar Museum tliere is a 

 supplemental eighth ray, which does not exist in examples 

 belonging to the British Museum. In the allied genus of 

 Grijsles the gill-rays vary in number from six to seven. 

 The pectoral fins are small, obliquely rounded, and are 

 attached far beneath the lateral line. The ventrals, the 

 axillaj of the pectorals, and the third dorsal spine, are in 

 the same vertical line. The spine of the ventrals is half 

 the length of the jointed rays. The dorsal spines lengthen 

 very gradually from the third to the last, the two first are 

 more steeply graduated. Their membrane is deeply 

 notched. The fourth articulated ray is greatly elongated, 

 with a tapering, almost filamentous tip. The third anal 

 spine, which is the longest, is much shorter than the soft 

 rays. This fin is rounded, and is considerably nearer to 

 the end of the tail than the dorsal. The caudal fin does 

 not spread much, and is truncated or slightly convex at 

 the end. It contains seventeen visible rays, and there are 

 some short ones above and below, concealed by the scales. 



The specimen being a dried section, much of the ori- 

 ginal markings must have disappeared. In its present 

 state many of the scales of the body above the middle 

 height have their disks partially, rarely wholly, of a shining 

 pitch-black colour. These dark disks are assembled in ill 

 defined patches, or bands, particularly beneath the spinous 

 dorsal. Lower down the sides, the scales are dark at their 

 bases, but not so black as the ujiper ones. Similar black 

 bauds appear on the head : one crossing between the eyes, 

 one running along the middle of the crown, another run- 

 ning forwards from the supra- scapular region to the tem- 

 ples, one descending the preoperculum, one from the eye 

 down the cheek, one filling the opercular notch, and run- 

 ning forward to the temples ; and there is, in addition, a 



roundish blotch on the posterior end of the intcroper- 

 culuui. None of these dark blotches have definite outlines. 

 All the fins, except the pectorals, appear to have been 

 narrowly edged anteriorly by while or orange. The cau- 

 dal is edged above and below with the same colour, and 

 in the dorsal this tint includes the tops of the s])ines, 

 and the fore edge of the filamentous soft ray.* The lower 

 parts of the spines and their membranes are black. 



DIMENSIONS. 

 Lengtli from intermaxillary symphysis to end of candal 



•i" •. 31-50 inches. 



„ „ hase of ditto. . 27-00 „ 



„ pill-opening j-oo 



Height behind pectorals 10-25 „ 



Hab. Houtmans Abrolhos, south-western coast of Aus- 

 tralia. 



Centropkistes (Auripis) s.-iLAR. Richardson. 



Sciana IriUta. J. R. Forsler apud Bloch, Schn. ? et in Descript. ,\ii 

 edit. H. Licht. p. 147,279? Tab. 211 Icon. ined. Georgio I'orsterJ 

 pict. in Bib. Banks, serv. ? 



Centropristes salar, Richardson, Zool. Proceed, for Jnnc, l.s.'Ji) Meni 

 Zool. Trans, iii." p. 78. 



Radii :— Br. 7 : D. 9\16 aut 17 ; A. 3110 ; C 17^ : P. 1« • 



V. 1|5. 



Plate XX., figs. 4, -5, 6. 



The naturalists who accompanied Cook on his first and 

 second voyages, procured in the Australian seas one or 

 more species of fish closely resembling the one we have 

 figured. Two figures of these were executed by Parkin- 

 son, and two by George Forster, one or both of the latter 

 being referred to by J. R. Forster, in his notes on Sciceiia 

 trutta, which were published in an abridged form in 

 Schneider's edition of Bloch (p. 542), and at full length in 

 the present year by Lichtenstein.f In the second volume 

 of the Histoire des Poissons (p. 54), the species is briefly 

 mentioned under the designation of Perca trutta, by 

 Cuvier, who then knew it only by Forster's notes, and a 

 tracing of one of the figures, which are all preserved in 

 the Banksian library. Subsequently MM. Quoy and Gai- 

 mard procured a fish in Bass's Straits, which is described 

 in the third volume of the Histoire des Poissons, by the 

 name of Centropristes ? truttaceus, with the remark that 

 it diff'ers from the other Centropristes in having the phy- 

 siognomy of a Casio or Smarts, and may, therefore, be one 

 day considered as the type of a peculiar genus. It is at 

 the same time conjectured that it may be identical witli 

 the Perca trutta of the former volume, which in such ti 

 case ought to be suppressed. 



In the description of a collection of fish made at Port 

 Arthur, in Van Diemen's Land, which was read before the 

 Zoological Society in June, 1839, and published in the 

 third volume of their Transactions in 1842, I gave a de- 

 tailed account of Centropristes salar, which I ventured to 

 name as distinct from triitluceus, almost solely because the 

 lower pieces of the gill-covers were scaly, while ot tnitta- 



* These pale edges are not indicated in the figure. 



f Descrifliones Animaiium qua in Itinere ad Maris Austratis Terras per 

 a7inos 1772 — 1674 susceptn, observavil Joannes Reinoldus Forster, curante 

 Henrico Lichtenstein. Berolini. 1844, 



