500 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. 83 



in published records. Tliis is true not only of sporadic and occasional 

 records, as in local lists of fishes, but also of accounts of the entire 

 genus. Three such accounts have been published, namely, by Kaup,'^ 

 by Dumeril,*' and by Giinther.^ After one becomes familiar with the 

 true distinctive specific characters and the geograpliical distribution 

 of the species, it is only necessary to skim through the accounts of 

 these authors to see how badly in some cases they mixed up their 

 species.^ 



On account of existing errors it seemed useless, or even misleading 

 in some cases, to attempt a compilation of complete bibliographies of 

 the species concerned to indicate their geographic distribution. Con- 

 sequently, the bibliographic citations given here under each species 

 include only: (1) Prunary synonym.s; (2) references having a direct 

 bearing on the nomenclature; (3) readily available records based on 

 material examined by me; and (4) a few records that may be referred 

 to their proper species mth some assurance. The precise geographical 

 limits of nearly all the species or subspecies still remain to be de- 

 termined, 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



I wish to express grateful acloiowledgment for aid rendered in 

 this investigation, wliich is based largely on the comparatively 

 extensive collection of seahorses in the United States National 

 Museum. Dr. Alexander Wetmore and Dr. Leonhard Stejneger 

 kindly permitted my access to the facilities and collections of the 

 Museum, and Earl D. Reid unstintedly gave his time to make available 

 these collections. Special acknowledgment is due Dr. George S. 

 Myers, who took his post as assistant curator of fishes in the National 

 Museum while tliis study was in progress. Besides maldng some 

 constructive suggestions and calling my attention to some obscure 

 publications. Dr. Myers, in putting in order the mass of accumulated 

 miscellaneous unclassified material in the National Museum, un- 

 covered and placed at my disposal many desirable specimens, which 



• Catalogue of the lophobranchiate fish in the collection of the British Museum, 1856. 



« Histoire naturelle des poissons ou ichthyologie g6n6rale, vol. 2, 1870. 



' Catalogue of the fishes of the British Museum, vol. 8, 1870. 



« Such treatment of Hippocampus has continued until our day. In a work on the fishes of West Africa 

 by H. W. Fowler (Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 70, 1936), which appeared after the completion of the 

 manuscript of this report, the author makes the statement that he cannot "find any characters worthy of 

 specific distinction" between H. hudsomus and //. hippocampus, and at the same time he recognizes H. 

 punclulatus as a fully distinct species. As a matter of fact, punctvlatus is nothing more than a geographic 

 subspecies of hiulsonius, while liudsonius and hippocampus are as fully distinct and divergent as almost 

 any other two species of the subgenus Hippocampus. If those two species weresynonymized, it would be 

 necessary, in order to be consistent, to lump all species of the subgenus flippocampus in one species. Such a 

 taxonomic absurdity was not suggested for more than a century by any writer that I know of, and it is 

 evidently not subscribed to by Fowler. His descriptions were apparently made in haste, and it is hard to 

 surini.se the species he had; but judged by the dorsal count he gives under hippocampus, it seems apparent 

 that his account of that "species", based on Mediterranean material, includes specimens of both common 

 species occurring in the northern part of that sea, hippocampus and gultulatus. His account of punctulatus 

 undoubtedly is also based on material of more than one species, judged by the geographical distribution of 

 the species of Hippocampus in general. 



