1888.] PROCEEDINGS OP UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 567 



ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE MAIL-CHEEKED FISHES. 



BY THEODORE GILL. 



In the northern seas are found fishes known as Sculpins, Pogges, and 

 Gurnards. In the Systema Naturae, Liunaeus referred the Sculpins and 

 Pogges to the genus (160) Coitus, whose essential character was a head 

 broader than the body, while the Gurnards were segregated in the 

 genus (172) Trig la, distinguished by free fiuger-like rays below the 

 pectorals. In the Mediterranean and warmer seas live compressed 

 scaly fishes more or less beset with tag like cutaneous appendages; 

 these were coinbiued in the genus ( 01) Scorpama, whose chief charac- 

 teristic was a head with scattered cirri or tags {caput scirrhis adsper- - 

 sum.) In the northern seas is also found a species now known to he 

 related to the Scorpwna, but which was referred by Linnajus to the genus 

 Perca as P. marina. Such fishes are the subjects for present inquiry. 



CUVIER. 



In 18°9 in the Kegne Animal and the Histoire Naturelle des Poiasons, 

 Cuvier "established, as the second family of Acauthopterygian fishes,* 

 those with mailed cheeks, - Joues cuirassees." This family was intended 

 to embrace a number of fishes to which the singular shape ot the head, 

 beset with spines and armed and cuirassed, gives a peculiar physiog- 

 nomy which has always caused them to be classified in special genera, 

 although they have intimate relations with the perches. Their common 

 character is to have suborbitals more or less extended over the cheek 

 and articulating behind with the preoperculum. Uranoscopus alone 

 according to Cuvier (which he referred to the family of perches), has 

 something approximating it, but its suborbital, although very large, is 

 attached behind to the temporal (prootic) bone and not to the ^preope, 

 culum. To the family thus defined he referred the genera TrigU, Coitus, 

 and Scorpama of Linnaeus, as wellas souk^^ 



des genres spociaux, Lien qJils aieat de grands rappor a ' ( , t 



ractlrecommnn est d'avoir les sous-orbitaxres plus on ,,.„.. u < « ■ •< ...._ 



8 ' ar ticulaotenamereavcclepr€opercule L< - "£ *«» ^ ^ \ 



dente,a quelqne chose d'approchant ; mais son sons-orbita.r bi. l 

 .attache en arriero an, os de latere ^^J^^jL, m ais on a d* 



Linnaeus en faisait trois genres: Les Tng les, les 

 les subdiviser, ez il faut y joindre une partie .1- ses Gast. cos 



