86 ME MO IBS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM. 



Thursday Island, and the Burnett River, M.Q., and presented to the Queens- 

 land Museum by the Wanetta Pearling Co., Capt. Donald McDonald (2), and 

 Mr. L. H. Maynard. 



Historical: — To the early Dutch naturalists and historians of the East 

 Indies this fish was well known from the time of Nieuhof, who visited those seas 

 in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Its extraordinary appearance 

 rendered it a favorite subject for illustration and, after Nieuhof, "Willughby, 

 Ruysch, Valentyn, Seba, and Renard figured it at intervals with more or less- 

 success. These were followed by certain authors (Bonnaterre, Gmelin, Lacepede) 

 whose accounts were mainly based on the descriptions and figures of their 

 predecessors, but who wofully complicated matters by confounding our fish with 

 the Zeus gallus of Linnaeus, an eastern American species now more generally 

 known as Selene vomer. Russell, a contemporary of Lacepede, gave in 1803 a 

 recognizable figure of the young fish over the name " Gurrah Parah" from a 

 specimen taken on the East Coast of India. On the same sheet, as " Chewoola 

 Parah," he figured the young of the succeeding species, A. ciliaris and, while in- 

 some points these figures are inaccurate, the flattened outline of the abdominal 

 region, so distinctive of our present fish, is well shown as compared with the 

 deeper and more rounded belly, which is characteristic of its congener when 

 young. Russell, however, like the others confused his ' ' gurrah parah ' ' with Zeus 

 gallus Linnceus, while he referred his " chewoola parah" to Linnaeus' Zeus 

 vomer, thus while correctly keeping the two Indian species separate, uniting them 

 by two names, which properly belong to a single Atlantic species. Up to this 

 time our fish was only known from Malayan and Indian seas, and it was not until 

 1828 that the eastern fish was definitely separated from its western relative by 

 Ruppell, who described it under the distinctive name of Scyris indie us from 

 specimens obtained at Massawa on the Abyssinian shore of the Red Sea. 

 Valenciennes in his two 3 descriptions adds little or nothing to our knowledge of 

 the species, nor does Cantor who also described it under two names. Richardson 

 added the China Sea to its range, mentioning specimens sent to England from 

 Macao and Canton. Bleeker, between 1849 and 1875, reported it from various 

 parts of the Malay Archipelago as enumerated elsewhere, and finally includes it 

 among the fishes of Madagascar though, so far as we can ascertain, it has not been 

 reported from either Mauritius or Zanzibar. Up to and including 1860 Bleeker 

 had rightly kept the Indo-Malayan fish separate from that of the Atlantic, but 



8 Bean and Weed remark — ' ' Cuvier & Valenciennes describe this species under five 

 names: Scyris indicus, Scyris alexandrinus, Galliclithys major, Galliclithys cJievala, and 

 GallicMhys cegyptiacus. ' ' Although there can be no question as to the close affinity that exists- 

 between our fish and Alectis alexandrina, their identity cannot so carelessly be taken for 

 granted, and we are disposed to place more than ordinary reliance on the increased number of 

 dorsal and anal rays in the Mediterranean form, on account of their remarkable constancy 

 throughout the whole range of the Indo-Pacific, as favoring a contrary conclusion. This of 

 course also excludes G. cegyptiacus, while G. chevola is a synonym of A. ciliaris. 



