370 REPORT OF NEW, JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 
Family SCORPHNIDZ. 
The Rock Fishes. 
Body oblong, more or less compressed. Head large, with 4 
or more pairs of ridges above which usually terminate in spines. 
Mouth terminal, usually large, with villiform teeth on vomer and 
in jaws, also usually on palatines. Premaxillaries protractile. 
Maxillary broad, without supplemental bone, not slipping under 
preorbital. Opercle usually with 2 spinous processes, preopercle 
with 4 or 5. Gill-openings wide, extending forward below. 
Gill-membranes separate and free from isthmus. Usually no 
slit behind fourth gill. Pseudobranchiz large. Air-vessel usually 
present. Pyloric cceca in small or moderate number, less than 
12. A narrow bony stay extending backward from suborbital 
toward preopercle. Actinosts moderate, inserted on posterior 
edges of hypercoracoid and hypocoracoid. Ribs borne on en- . 
large pleurapophyses. Post-temporal bifurcate, normally con- 
nected. Myodome more or less developed. Scales ctenoid, some- 
times nearly obsolete. Lateral line single, continuous, concurrent 
with back. Dorsal continuous, sometimes so deeply notched as to: 
divide it into 2 parts with VIII to XVI rather strong spines and 
about as many soft rays. Anal rather short, with III spines and 
5 to 10 soft rays. Soft rays of all fins branched, except some or 
all pectoral rays. Ventrals thoracic, of normal Percoid form, 
I, 5, rays branched. 
Fishes living about rocks, non-migratory, mostly of large size, 
and all used as food. Many are viviparous, producing young in 
great numbers when about % of an inch in length. ‘They are 
especially abundant in the temperate parts of the Pacific Ocean.. 
One species recorded from our shores. 
Genus SEBASTES Cuvier. 
The Rose Fishes. 
Sebastes marinus (Linnzus). 
PLATE 79. 
Red Sea Perch. 
Dorsal usually with XV spines, and anal with 7 or 8 soft rays, 
also pectoral long and narrow. 
