PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 275 



DisxraiiUTioN. 



Barbados (Scliomburgk). 

 Jamaica (National MiiseuDi). 

 Belize, Ilondiiras (Giiutlier). 

 Island of Ascension (Giiutlier). 



Jamaica (Giiutlier). 

 Antilles (Ilollard). ^ 

 St. Martins (Cope). 

 Cuba (Poey). 



Ostracioiis with triagoiial (-arapace and with flat prominent .spine on 

 each ventral ridge. Breadth of body less than half its length without 

 caudal. 



Space between eyes concave. From the jnedian dorsal line the sides 

 of the back descend rapidly, curving outward slightly. Caudal fin 

 rounded. 



Color yellowish, with numerous small round brown spots on carapace, 

 tail, and caudal fin. D. 10, A. 10, P. 12. 



The Brown-spotted Trunk-fish has a wider distribution to the south 

 than the Cuckold, having been recorded by Dr. Giinther from the Island 

 of Ascension, where a young individual was taken by Mr. J. Eobinson. 

 It is also in Mr. Osbert Salvin's Honduras collections. It has not yet 

 been recorded from the coast of Florida, or to the north of Cuba. 



It attains a much larger size than the preceding. HoUard gives the 

 following dimensions for one of the largest in the Museum d'llistoire 

 Naturelle : 



M. 



Length 0.440 



Maximum heiglit 0.143 



Length <^f head 0.090 



Tail-stem ^ 0.080 



CavKhil 0.080 



Breadth of al)domen 0.110 



The Trunk-fishes appear to ha^e been objects of curiosity in the early 

 days of American exploration, and were evidently among the choicest 

 treasures of the primitive museums of the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries. Their strange shapes naturally attracted the attention of 

 travellers, and then, as now, the ease with which their shells could be 

 preserved made them fa\'orites of curiosity hunters. No group of trop- 

 ical fishes is so thoroughly worked out in the writings of "the fathers" 

 as the Plectognaths, and none more so than the Ostracions. Over two 

 hundred years ago every species of Ostracion now known from the 

 western Atlantic had been named and described by the naturalists of 

 northern Europe, and it is a well-deserved tribute to their discrimina- 

 tion as zoologists to say that none of the many eftbrts which have since 

 been made to subdivide these species have been at all successful. 



Artedi in his notes upon the different forms of Ostracion mentions 

 the various collections in which he observed specimens. The "Naggs' 

 head," "White Bear," and the "Green Dragon in Stepney," to which he 

 very often alludes, seem to have been London taverns where cmiosities 

 were kept. He also speaks of seeing them in the museum of Hans 

 Sloane, the nucleus of the British Museum ; also in the collections of D. 



