PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 53 



" The colour of Shaw's fish is described as silvery, but those who are 

 acquainted with the fugacious nature of metallic colours iu this class of 

 animals are aware that nothing positive can be deduced from this acci- 

 dental circumstance. The fact of their being captured in difterent lat- 

 itudes, and the diflereiice in their size, is of little importance. 



" The eyes of the Stylephorus are described as being large and pe- 

 dunculated ; iu the animal noticed above they are small and sessile. 

 Shaw examines carefully to find marks of a reticulated structure, but 

 without success. The circumstance of their standing on peduncles or 

 foot-stalks is so much at variance with what occurs in other animals 

 that I should hesitate little iu declaring their unusual form to have 

 been the result of accident or disease. 



" As the generic name proposed by Shaw is probably derived from 

 an accidental character, I venture to substitute for it the name of Sac- 

 cophary7ix, in allusion to the pouch-like form of its throat." (Pp. 85, 86.) 



It will thus be observed that Mitchill manifests little or no doubt as 

 to the identity of his fish with the Stylephorus of Shaw, and that the 

 name of Saccopharynx proposed by him was given simjily as a substi- 

 tute, and on account of the impropriety of Shaw's name. It is quite evi- 

 dent, however, that there is no relation between the two forms, and that 

 they belong even to widely distinct orders. 



It might then be questioned whether the name Saccopliary^ix should 

 be admitted for the new genus, and whether it should not rather be 

 considered as a synonym of Stylephorus ; but this doubt is at once dis- 

 sipated when we recur to the generic diagnosis of Mitchill, where it ap- 

 pears that his description was based ui^on an entirelj' different form, and 

 is not interchangeable with one framed for Shaw's species. The diag- 

 nosis of Mitchill is as follows : 



''Genus. Saccopharynx. 



"Jaws capable of great dilatation. 

 "Throat wide like a bag. 



" Tail flagelliform, tapering away to a point, and beset with many pairs 

 of cirrhi. 



"Dorsal, caudal, and anal fins united." 



No specific name was given by Dr. Mitchill to his fish, but he would 

 probably have called it Saccopharynx chordatiis. 



In 1827, Dr. J. Harwood, " professor of natural history in the Eoyal 

 Institution of Great Britain," communicated to the Eoyal Society, in 

 whose "Philosophical Transactions" it was published (for the year 1827, 

 pp. 49-57, pi. 7) a memoir " on a newly discovered genus of serpentiform 

 fishes." This memoir was devoted to an account of " a newly discovered, 

 and a very extraordinary marine animal, which was obtained in the 

 autumn of 1826. 



