168 FISHES OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



Order HEMIBRANCHII. The Half -Gills. 



Family FISTULARIID.E. The Trumpet-fishes. 



This is the only family of the order represented in North Carolina, and it has 

 but a single genus. The body is very elongate, depressed, destitute of scales but 

 with series of bony shields partly covered by skin. The head is very long, owing 

 to the prolongation of the bones of the anterior part of the skull; these form a 

 tube at the end of which is the small mouth. Minute teeth exist on the jaws and 

 roof of mouth. The gills are 4 in number on each side, the gill-rakers are obso- 

 lete, and the basal parts of the gills are absent; the branchial membranes are 

 separate, and not joined to the isthmus; pseudobranchise are present. The 

 intestine is short, the pyloric coeca are few, and the air-bladder is large. The 

 spinous dorsal, which is small or rudimentary in other families of this order, is 

 entirely lacking here; the soft dorsal is small and placed for backward as in 

 Hemirhamphus, and the anal is similar to it in size and position; the caudal is 

 forked and from its middle a long, slender filament proceeds; the pectorals and 

 ventrals are quite small, and the latter are abdominal, wide apart, 6-rayed, and 

 far in advance of dorsal. 



Genus FISTULARIA Linnseus. Trumpet-fishes. 



Large shore fishes of warm seas, with characters as given above. The bony 

 plates or shields are a strip in the median line of the back, a dorso-lateral pair 

 posterior to the head, a pair on the sides anteriorly, and a ventral pair extending 

 far backward. The snout has longitudinal ridges which are more or less serrated. 

 The skin is either rough or smooth. The pectoral fins are broad-based and 

 inserted low. Three American species, two on east coast and one on both coasts; 

 only one known from United States waters. {Fistularia, from the Latin fistula, 

 a tube or pipe.) 



145. FISTULARIA TAB AC ARIA Linneeus. 

 Trumpet-fish. 



Fistularia tabacaria Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, ed. x, 312, 1758; tropical America. Yarrow 1877, 205; Beau- 

 fort. Jenkins, 1887, 87; Beaufort. Jordan & Evermann, 1896, 757; "occasional northward to Carolina." 



Diagnosis. — Greatest depth of body about .03 total length and .66 width; head rather 

 more than one third length; mouth oblique, lower jaw overlapping upper; snout very long, 

 contained 3.75 times in total length; upper lateral edges of snout usually with a few fine serra- 

 tions; width of eye about equal to length of lower jaw and rather more than .1 length of head; 

 sharp points on anterior and posterior margins of orbit; dorsal rays 14, the longest .25 length of 

 snout; anal opposite dorsal, its rays 13, the longest equal to longest dorsal; caudal forked, the 

 lobes equal, the slender median filament a httle longer than snout; pectorals short, .5 length of 

 head posterior to snout; ventrals very small, inserted about midway between tip of snout and 

 end of caudal lobes. Color: reddish brown above, with many large oblong blue spots on back 

 and sides, the spots arranged in series but of unequal size; under parts pale, {tabacaria, having 

 shape of a pipe.) 



The trumpet-fish is a straggler from the West Indies to the United States 

 coast, where it has been recorded from as far north as Massachusetts by the 

 author. Dr. Yarrow recorded two specimens taken at Beaufort in September 



