KUIBIJi FISHES OF QUEENSLAND— OGILBY. 57 



of Fislu'i-ics, hy means of which it is liopcd tliat botli the public and the profes- 

 sional fisheiiiien will materially benefit ; and by which it may be expected that 

 the vast importance of our fishing industries, so shamefully neglected in the past, 

 may be broTight into adequate prominence.) 



Described from thi-ee exanijiles, measuring 248 to 267 lum., taken by liook 

 oil the Caloundra Bank, and presented respectively to the Amateur Fishermen's 

 Association by its President, Mr. Thomas Welsby, and to the Queensland Museum 

 by Mr. T. V. Troedson and myself, the largest of the three being selected as the 

 type : Reg. No. I. 2648. In elegance of form and beauty of coloration this species 

 equals, if indeed it does not surpass, any other fish of our seas, even the wonderful 

 rainbow-fishes and butterfly-fishes of our coral reefs paling to insignificance 

 before its delicate loveliness. 



Our illustration is taken from the holotype, and should be studied along 

 with the color-pattern of recent specimens given above for, as vi^ith all fishes of 

 similar delicacy, the various tints are extremely evanescent, and disappear almost 

 inunediately in preservatives. 



Sotc on Synagris furcosus Giiiitlter. 

 After carefully examining the literature of this fish from both poiiils of 

 view, I am unable to satisfy myself as to its identity with the Dcnfex furcosus of 

 Cuvier and A'alenciennes, because, in the first place, while that fish is said to have 

 been obtained by Raynaud "in the roadstead of Trineomalee," it has not since 

 been found in Indian waters, and Day has omitted it fi'om his great work on the 

 "Fishes of India, Burma, and Ceylon";'* and, in the second place, because the 

 description of its form, as given by the French authors, does not agree well with 

 that of Giinther. This author, who had before him seven specimens from various 

 eastern localities on which to form an opinion, made the species the type of his 

 new genus i^ijuagris, but kept the eastern fish united to the western and somewhat 

 hypothetical Dridcx furcosus, a conclusion which has not been borne out by 

 subsequent research. Bleaker, it may be observed, was also dissatisfied with 

 Giinther's identification, for he writes — "M. Gunther rapporte cctte espcce au 

 Dcntcx furcosus dont ccpcndant la justesse me scniblc avoir hesoin d'etre 

 prouvcr.'"-' Since, therefore, the name furcosus was undeniably given in the first 

 place to a western — Ceylonese — species it becomes impossible to retain it for the 

 eastern fish, it seems, therefore, necessary to give a distinctive title to the latter. 

 In 1870 Day described froju Andaman specimens a fish which he named Dcntex 

 (Synagris) notatus.^" Five years later he records the same fish from the "Seas of 

 India," holding it to be "a slight variety of S. furcosus Gunther," which name he 

 places with .some hesitation in the synonymy of ^S'. notatus, being evidently of 

 opinion that Giinther's name had no locus sfcnidi, since it was doubtful whether 



"True, Day has doubtfully included Valenciennes' fish in the synonymy of liis *'. notatus, 

 but Sleeker has indisputably shown that that supposititious .species was identical witli 

 S. tcemopterus. 



" Atlas'lchth., viii, 1877, p. 85. 



"° Proc. Zool. Soe. Londoli, 1870, p. 684. 



