204 CONTRIBUnONS TO NORTH AMERICAN ICHTHYOLOGY IH. ■ 



tioD, to which tbo tubes of the lateral Hue extend also. For this new genus I propose 

 the name of Bahalichthijs, intending to recall the name of Buflalo lish, commonly 

 applied to this si)ccics. To this genus belong the species I have described as Carpiodea 

 uru8 from the Tennossea River, C. taiir us fiom Mob.le River, and C. vituliis from the 

 Wabasb, and also the Catoslomiis niger of Rafinesque and Catostomtis bubahis of Dr. Kirt- 

 laud from the Ohio, but not C. bubal us Rafinesque, which is the tj'pe of the genus Ich- 

 thyobus described in the following paragraph. I have another ubw species from the 

 Osage River, sent me by Mr. George StoUey. This shows this typo to be widely dis- 

 tributed in our western waters, but thus far it has not been found in the Atlantic 

 states. I have some doubts resijecting the nomenclature of these species which are 

 rather difficult to solve. It will be seen upon reference to Rafinesque's Ichthyologia 

 Ohiensis, p. 55 and 5(5, that he mentions two species of his subgenus Iclithyobus, one of 

 which he calls C. babaJus, and the other C. niger ; the second he has not seen himself, 

 but describes it on the authority of Mr. Audubon as 'entirely similar to the comnum 

 Buffalo fish,' his C. bubalns, but ' larger, weighing upwards of fifty pounds.' Dr. Kirt- 

 land, on the other hand, describes the C.bubalus as the largest species found in the 

 western waters, and adds that the young is nearly elliptical in its outline and is often 

 sold in the market as a distinct species under the name of Buffalo Perch. If the e was 

 only one species of Buffalo in those waters the case would be very simple, and the Ca- 

 tostomus bubalus and niger of Rafinesque, and C. bubalus of Dr. Kirtland, should simply 

 be considered as synonymous, hut Dr. Ranch of Burlington has sent me fine specimens 

 of this Buffalo Perch, to which the remark of Dr. Kirtland, ' elliptical in its outline,' 

 perfectly applies, and I find that it not only differs specifically but even generically 

 from the broader, high backed, common Buffalo, and being the smaller species, I take 

 it to be Rafinesque's C. bubahis, the type of his genus Iclithyobus, which is more fully 

 characterised below, whilst the larger species, Rafinesque's C. niger, can be no other 

 than Dr. Kirtland's C. bubalus, ' the largest species of the western waters.' It seems 

 therefore hardly avoidable to retain the name of C. niger or rather Bubalichthys niger 

 for the common Buffalo, though Rafinesque, who first named the fish, never saw it, or 

 if he saw it mistook it for his own bubalus, and though Dr. Kirtland, who correcily 

 describes and figures it, names it C. bubalus, for such is the natural result to which the 

 history of the successive steps in our investigation of these fishes lead. But our diffi- 

 culties here are not yet at an end. Among the splendid collections I received from Dr. 

 Eauch, I fomjd two perfectly distinct species of Bubalichthys, one with a large mouth, 

 and the other with a small mouth, and one of Ichthyobus, living together in the Missis- 

 sippi River, in the neighborhood of Burlington, Iowa; and the next question, proba- 

 bly never to be solved, will be, if they all three occur also in the Ohio, whether Rafi- 

 nesque's C. niger was the big mouthed or the small mouthed Bubalichthys. Judging 

 from the figure given by Dr. Kirtland in the Boston Journal of Natural History, vol. v, 

 pi. fig. 2, 1 believe his C. bubalus to be the small mouthed species. I myself have, how- 

 ever, seen only one specimen of the big mouthed species from the Ohio, and that in 

 rather an indifferent state of preservation; for which I am indebted to Prof. Baird, and 

 none of the small mouthed species. Should, however, all three, as is possible, occur in 

 the Ohio as well as the Mississippi, to avoid introducing new names, I will call the 

 big mouthed species B. niger, preserving for it Rafinesque's specific name, — the small 



