CHAPTER XVIII 



MISCELLANEOUS FISHES 



THE LADY-FISH 



{Albida vidpes) 



Albula vulpes. The Lady-fish. Body rather elongate, little com- 

 pressed, covered with rather small, brilliantly-silvery scales ; 

 head naked; snout conic, subquadrangular, shaped like the 

 snout of a pig, and overlapping the small, inferior, horizontal 

 mouth; head 3I ; depth 4; scales 9-71-7 ; D. 15; A. 8 ; max- 

 illary rather strong, short, with a distinct supplemental bone, 

 slipping under the membraneous edge of the very broad pre- 

 orbital ; premaxillaries short, not protractile ; lateral margin of 

 upper jaw formed by the maxillaries ; both jaws, vomer and 

 palatines, with bands of villiform teeth ; broad patches of coarse, 

 blunt, paved teeth on the tongue behind and on the sphenoid 

 and pterygoid bones ; opercle moderate, firm ; preopercle with 

 a broad, flat, membraneous edge, which extends backward over 

 the base of the opercle ; gill membranes separate ; no gular 

 plate ; a fold of skin across gill membranes, its free edge crenate ; 

 belly flattish, covered with ordinary scales, not carinate ; eye 

 large, with a bony ridge above it, and almost covered with an 

 annular adipose eyelid. 



The lady-fish, or bonefish, is the only repre- 

 sentative of the family Albulidce. It has long 

 been known to science through the early voyagers 

 to the southern coasts of America. It was first 

 described by Marcgrave in his " History of Bra- 

 zil," in 1648, and afterward by Catesby, in his 

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