wise gave a general account of the soft anatomy of Mola, 

 with an emphasis on the structure of the caudal region, 

 its bony supports, cartilaginous pterygials, and unusual 

 fin rays. Two of Cleland's most often quoted statements 

 were that Mola possessed no otoliths and had only two 

 semicircular canals. Cleland was not aware that Cuvier 

 (1805, 2:456-457) had described the otoliths of Mola as 

 being gelatinous and mucoid, rather than calcareous, 

 and that he had even figured (pi. 18, fig. 1) the three 

 semicircular canals. Cleland's error has been corrected a 

 number of times: vide, Harting (1865), Thompson 

 (1888), and Meek (1904). 



Harting's (1865) general anatomy of Mola contained 

 very few references to osteology, but he did give a brief 

 description of the long, sharp-pointed teeth on the upper 

 pharyngeals. Walgren's (1867) work on Mola was most- 

 ly confined to external characteristics, but brief notes 

 were given on the skeleton, and the jaws, with their 

 trituration plates, were well described and figured. The 

 first worker to publish on the general anatomy of the dis- 

 tinctive molids of the genus Ranzania was Trois ( 1883- 

 1884), whose osteological interest, however, was mainly 

 confined to the comparison of the histology of the bones 

 of Ranzania with that of Masturus and Mola. He pointed 

 out, for example, that Ranzania has a much more com- 

 pletely ossified skeleton than that of the other molids. 

 Trois' histologically oriented work was soon followed by 

 Beauregard's (1893) descriptive osteology of Ranzania. 

 Beauregard gave us our basic knowledge of the general 

 osteology of Romania, and the information that he 

 presented was not supplemented until Raven (1939b) 

 published his brief article on its anatomy. One of the 

 more accurate of the early general osteologies of Mola 

 was that of Steenstrup and Liitken (1898); the various 

 figures (unnumbered; occurring on p. 91-94) of the skull 

 and branchial apparatus are, with the exception of the 

 orbital region, notably accurate, and the lateral view of 

 the entire skeleton (pi. 2) is only questionable in the 

 region of the pseudocaudal fin. Two other papers should 

 be mentioned here in relation to molid anatomy, that of 

 Gregory and Raven (1934) on Mola and that of Raven 

 (1939a) on Masturus. Both of these papers were primari- 

 ly concerned with the myology, but information was also 

 given on the osteology of the supporting structures of the 

 pseudocaudal fin. 



Of a much more ambitious nature than any of the 

 above-mentioned papers on molid anatomy was Briihl's 

 (1856) "Osteologisches aus dem Pariser Pflanzengar- 

 ten," in which there appeared (p. 58-70) brief os- 

 teological descriptions of Balistes, Ostracioh, Alutera, 

 Tetraodon, and Diodon. Briihl confined himself almost 

 entirely to the cranium, and the few figures which he 

 gave of various regions of the plectognath skeleton show 

 very little detail, but if one takes the time to translate 

 the sirchaic terminology of the bones, one finds that 

 Bruhl's osteological observations were substantially cor- 

 rect. It is hard to explain, however, how he mistook part 

 of the sphenotic in Diodon for a parietal; possibly it was 

 because Wellenbergh had found a "parietal" in Mola, 

 and thus one might expect to also find one in Diodon, if 



one believed very strongly in the close relationship of 

 those two types. In his "Zootomie," Bruhl (1880) 

 presented excellent illustrations (pi. 24, with two un- 

 numbered pages of explanation; also see Briihl 1891) of 

 Balistes, and the only serious error in his various figures 

 of the skeleton is the presence of an extra suture between 

 the parasphenoid and basioccipital. 



A work very similar to Briihl's (1856) "Osteologisches" 

 in its conception, but broader in its scope of coverage, 

 was Klein's (1884, 1885, 1886) "Bildung des Schadels der 

 Knochenfische." In this general work on the teleost skull, 

 Klein discussed the cranial osteology of representatives 

 of most of the major plectognath subgroups. His descrip- 

 tions were, on the whole, accurate, and since his illus- 

 trations were so well executed, it is unfortunate that 

 there were so few of them. Klein corrected a great many 

 of Hollard's osteological errors, and stressed (1886:230- 

 234) the presence of a myodome in the nonostracioid 

 scleroderms and its absence in the gymnodonts. In an 

 earlier paper Klein (1872) had described the cranial os- 

 teology of four species of Balistes, and while his descrip- 

 tions were relatively accurate, his illustrations were so 

 reduced in size for publication that little detail can be 

 seen. Klein (1881) published one other paper on plectog- 

 nath osteology, devoted primarily to the description of 

 the spiny dorsal fin locking mechanism in triacanthoids 

 and balistoids. 



Rosenthal (1839) produced rather accurate lateral 

 views of the entire skeletons and other detailed views of 

 Balistes, Ostracion, Tetraodon, and Diodon. 



Several other papers of special importance to the os- 

 teology of particular species should be mentioned here. 



The osteology of the skull of Balistes and Mola was 

 described and reasonably well illustrated by Supino 

 (1905), as was the branchial apparatus of each species, 

 the latter being an important anatomical system which 

 had all too often been neglected by previous workers. 

 Much of the information that Supino published in his 

 1905 paper appeared again in his more general work 

 (1907) on "II Crano dei Pesci." 



Awati and Bal ( 1933) initiated a series of papers on the 

 anatomy of Indian puffers with a description of the 

 skeleton of Tetraodon (= Fugu) ohlongus, but their os- 

 teological descriptions suffer from numerous serious 

 defects, as will be detailed later. The second paper in this 

 series (Awati and Bal 1934) dealt with the blood vas- 

 cular system, and the third paper (Bal 1937) with the 

 nervous system. A far more detailed and accurate survey 

 of the functional anatomy of the head of that species was 

 given by Sarkar (1960) in a published doctoral disser- 

 tation. 



A work of importance to the generic classification of 

 the tetraodontids is Kuronuma's (1943) survey of the 

 configuration of the top of the cranium of 14 species of 

 Japanese puffers. Besides giving a photograph of the top 

 of the cranium of each of these species, diagrammatic il- 

 lustrations were presented of lateral views of the skulls of 

 species representative of the three genera to which the 

 species belong. Kuronuma's osteology is correct and he 

 has made available much information of diagnostic value 



