ON THE PROPER NAME OF THE GENUS LABRAX OF CUVIER. 



BY THEODORE GILL. 



In 1888 Professor D. S. Jordan, in the fifth and last edition of that 

 excellent epitome, "A Manual of the Vertebrate Animals of the North- 

 ern United States" (p. 136), has resuscitated the genera Rjccus and 

 Morone for the American Labracinse, and it was evidently his intention 

 to retain them as genera distinct from their European relations. He 

 has thus reverted to the views promulgated by Gill in 18G1. A few 

 words may be in place now as to the proper name of the European 

 genus. Labrax can not be used, inasmuch as it had been previously 

 employed by Pallas as well as Ouvier himself* for a genus of north 

 Pacific fishes familiar to all American ichthyologists under the name 

 Hexagrammus, and by the European chiefly designated as Ghirus. In 

 this dilemma, then, another name becomes necessary, and this may 

 be found in Dicentrarchus, a designation proposed originally for the 

 Labrax punctatus of Geoil'roy St. Hilaire under the belief that that 

 species had, as represented, only two anal spines. It has been since 

 shown, however, by Steindachner and others that the character in 

 question was illusive and void, and that the species in reality is a typ- 

 ical Labrax, and very closely related to the common Labrax lupus of 

 the Mediterranean. The name Dicentrarchus thus becomes available 

 for all the European species of the genus, and inasmuch as the term is 

 inappropriate with the etymology which might naturally be attributed 

 to it, it can be interpreted as referring to another feature and be im- 

 agined as composed of o;c, double (in sense of 2), xevrpov, spine, and ap%o<; 

 chief, in allusion to the renown and excellence of the fish and to the 

 two kinds of armature or spines which surround the pre-opercular 

 margin and distinguish them from their American relations, as well 

 as the two spines which arm the operculum and on which the genus 

 was especially distinguished from Perca by Ouvier. The specific name 

 of the typical species will then be Dicentrarchus punctatus. 



The external differences between the genera JRoccus and Moronc are 

 supplemented by cranial ones, and such are diagnosed by the author 

 in the report on ichthyology in Simpson's Explorations Across the 

 Great Basin of Utah in 1859 (1876, pp. 339, 390). 



' Cuvier, Regne animal, v. 2 (1817), p. 268. 

 Proc erti igs J. S. National Museum, vol. xi, 1 — I, 

 252 



