notp:s ox characinoid fishes witit ctenoid scales, 

 with a description of a new psectrogaster. 



By Theodore Gill, LL. D. 



DurinCt a recent examination of the Characinoid fishes of the United 

 States National Musenm, I found a Curimatine which I at once recog- 

 nized as rehited to the long known Anodus or Curimatus ciliaixs, but 

 which was much slenderer and apparently undescribed. The rough- 

 ness of the body arrested immediate attention and brought up to my 

 mind a late article by an ichthyologist of deserved eminence calling 

 attention to the presence of ctenoid scales in an African representative 

 of the family as peculiar. 



I. 



The existence of ctenoid scales in several Characinids has long been 

 recorded. In 1S45 Miiller and Troschel named one species Anodus 

 ciUaius^ on account of such scales. In 1861 the present writer called 

 attention to their presence in an ally of Xiphostoma, and gave the name 

 Ctenolncius to commemorate the character. '^ In 1S85 Sagemehl referred 

 to the development of ctenoid scales in Curimatus^ Xiphostoma and 

 DisticJiodusJ In 1889 Dr. and Mrs. Eigenmanu recognized ctenoid 

 scales in some species of typical CurimaU.* Finally, in 1893, Professor 

 Vaillant described and illustrated the squamation of the XmiaiJiiops 

 umtaniaUis^ from Western Africa.^ Ctenoid scales have therefore been 

 found to have become developed in representatives of no less than four 

 distinct subfamilies, Curimatinte, Hydrocyoninje, Distichodontinaj and 

 Tetragonopterinte, while most of the members of the three polytypic 

 subfamilies have cycloid scales.*^ It follows that in each case ctenoid 



1 Horae Ichthyologic«, I, p. 25, pi. iv, fig. 4 (scale). 



2 A Catalogue of the Fishes of the Eastern Coast of North America. ]>. 8, 1861. 

 ^Morph. Jahrbuch, X, p. 2, 1885. 



< Various other Curimatiues with ctenoid scales have been described by Steiudach- 

 ner and the Eigenmanns. 



■■Bull. Soc. piiilomathique de Paris, (8) V, p. 13, 1893. 



^ DinHchodus is the only representative of the Distichodontina?. 



Proceedings of tlie United States National Museum, Vol. XVIII— No. lO.W. 



199 



