340 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [May, 



have no rneans of knowing, as I have found only one specimen, 

 besides the five obtained by myself at Delaware City, which can be 

 regarded as an authentic example of the species. This single 

 specimen is in the museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia, and consists of a dried and stuffed varnished skin 

 marked in white paint ' 84.' It agrees in every essential external 

 particular with my own alcoholic specimens, but no record of its his- 

 tory is accessible amongst the catalogues of the collections of that 

 institution ; all traces of the old manuscript catalogues of the 

 Bonaparte and the other old collections of fishes belonging to the 

 Academy's museum having been lost. I have, however, the strongest 

 suspicion that this specimen, which is evidently very old, judging 

 from its present condition, may be one of the originals of 

 Le Sueur's description published in the Transactions of the Ameri- 

 can Philosophical Society for 1818, though it does not correspond 

 in minor details. That it may possibly be one of the types of the 

 species seems to me not 'at all improbable, from the fact that 

 Le Sueur was also one of the early members of the Academy and 

 may have presented the specimen." 



I have not been able to find this specimen, and so far as I know 

 the only specimen from Le Sueur's collection at present in the 

 Academy is his Cyprinus maxUlingiia. Many of the typical speci- 

 mens he described were in the old Philadelphia Museum, and after 

 its dissolution they may have been destroyed in the conflagration of 

 P. T. Barnum, who purchased part of the natural history material. 

 For a short account of Peale's Museum see Stone, Auk, XVI, 

 1899, pp. 167 to 169. 



LEPISOSTEID^, 



20. Lepisosteus osseus (Linnaus). 



J^so£ osseus Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., Ed. X, 1758, p. 313. 



No. 16,971. Type of Lepldosteus crassus Cope, Proc. Acad. 

 Nat. Sci. Phila., 1865, p. 86. (Dried skin.) 



Cope says: " The type specimen was probably taken in brackish 

 water at Bombay Hook, near the mouth of the Delaware river." 

 In the Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1859, a Lepisosteus, most 

 likely this specimen, is entered among the donations to the museum 

 on the 8th of March as " Gar Fish. Lepldosteus bison? Caught 

 in the Delaware river at Bombay Hook. Presented by INIr. 



