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XV. On a new Genus of the Family Lophidae {Les Pectorales Pe'dicule'es, Cuv.) discovered 

 in Madeira. By the Rev. R. T. Lowe, M.A., Corr. Memb. of the Zool. Soc, &ic. 



Read September 22, 1846. 



1 HE family of the Lophidec or Frog-fishes, as described in tlie twelfth volume of MM. 

 Cuvier and Valenciennes' great work, is composed of about fifty species, which are 

 distributed into the five genera — Lophius, L., Cheironectes, Cuv. {Antennarius, Comm.), 

 Malthcea, Cuv., Halieuteea, Val., and Batrachus, Schn. ; the affinities of the last-named 

 group being somewhat ambiguous. The addition therefore of an unequivocal new type 

 or genus to a family so circumscribed in extent and singular in character, seems to 

 demand some fuller notice than a mere abstract of its technical distinctions. The pre- 

 sent genus has besides some further claims on the attention of the ichthyologist in the 

 annectent combination of its characters, presenting as it were fragments of those exhi- 

 bited by other groups in the same family, united to peculiar distinctive features of its 

 own ; and this independent of the interest attaching to the fish in which they are ex- 

 emplified for its singularity of form and aspect, brilliancy of colouring, locality, and 

 excessive rarity. During the last twenty years no other instance of its capture in 

 Madeira has occurred; and it seems quite unknown to the fishermen, by whom, how- 

 ever, the individual here figured was at once, sagaciously enough, referred to the Dio- 

 dontidcB or Toad-fish tribe, as " a kind of Sapo," which is their name for the Diodon 

 reticulatus, L., or the still more common Tetrodon marmoratus, nob. ; to the first of which, 

 in shape and habit, it bears indeed a strong resemblance. 



Its true affinity is nevertheless unquestionably with the Lophida ; and amongst these, 

 in general habit and aspect most with Cheironectes, Cuv., although in technical charac- 

 ters it may seem to approach even nearer to Halieuteea, Val. It is however rather 

 Cheironectiform than Tadpole-shaped, though it is thicker and more Diodontiform, or 

 swollen and inflated in the body, than even Cheironectes. It may be said to stand to 

 Halieuteea much in the relation in which Cheironectes stands to Lophius, having the 

 single dorsal fin and being devoid of filaments or cilia, like Halieuteea, but having the 

 elevated back of Cheironectes. It has a nearer relation however to Halieuteea than 

 Cheironectes has to Lophius, in the rough skin and wide transverse horse-shoe-shaped 

 mouth and gape. 



The individual here figured, and which I shall now proceed to describe, was taken 

 with an ordinary bait and line at the Picos, a rocky shoal about a league from the shore 



VOL. 111. PART IV. 3 A 



