PIMEPHALES FATHEADS 117 



Genus PIMEPHALES Rafinesque 



(FATHEADS) 



Body robust or elongate, little compressed; head short and rounded; 

 mouth small, inferior; upper jaw protractile; no barbel; teeth 4-4, with 

 oblique grinding surface, usually but one of the teeth hooked; intestinal 

 canal more than twice length of body; peritoneum black; dorsal rays 7 

 or 8; anal rays 7; the first (rudimentary) dorsal ray in males evidently 

 separated by membrane from the second, and not adnate to it as usually 

 in minnows; scales rather small, 43 to 47 in lateral series; lateral line 

 complete or imperfect. Size small, 2\ to 4 inches. Two species, gen- 

 erally distributed throughout the United States east of the Rockies. 



Key to the Species of PIMEPHALES found in Illinois 



a. Bodv short and stout, depth 3 to 4 in length; lateral line more or less in- 

 complete promelas. 



aa. Body moderately elongate, depth 4 to 5 in length; lateral line complete. . . . 

 notatus. 



PIMEPHALES PROMELAS Rafinesque 

 (black-head minnow; fathead) 



Rafinesque, 1S20, Ichth. Oh., S3, 



G., VII, 181; I. & G., 158; M. V., 55; I. & E., I, 217; \\, 45; J., 55; F., 79; F. F., 

 I. 6, 7«; L.. 14. 



Length 2 A inches; body robust, short, thick and deep, much heavier 

 forward, not notably compressed; depth 3.2 to 4 in length; caudal 

 peduncle stout, its length about same as head, its depth usually less 

 than 2 in its length. Color rather dark olive, with a tinge of coppery or 

 purplish forward; dorsal fin with a dusky cross-bar about the middle, 

 faint in females and young, but appearing as a large jet-black blotch 

 covering most of the lower two thirds of the fin in spring males; other 

 fins plain in females, in males all more or less dusky, pectorals and anal 

 most so; spring males often found in which almost the entire body is 

 dusky, the head in such instances being a jet Mark.* Head 3.6 to 4 in 

 length, very broad, short, and blunt, sometimes appearing almost 

 globular in breeding males; width of head unusually great (see Cliola 

 lax), 1.4 to 1.7 in its length; interorbital space broad and nearly 

 ila i (excepl in spring males, in which it is swollen), 2 to 2 . S in head ; eye 

 4. 1 to 4.S in head; nose longer than eye, 3 to 3.5 in head; mouth rather 

 mall, ubti rminal and quite oblique in females, in which the tip of the 



* Males taken from Kickapoo Creek a1 Ulmwood in June, 1900, have the hi ad 

 je1 black, and all the rest ol the body an extreme duskj with the exception oi a 



-I transvei - ba oi ligl i u I bacl oi and tipping the oj lercle and a 



similar bar which pai ses around the sidei direi tlj beneath the dorsal fin. 



(9) 



