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ANNUAL EEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



by their characters as not to demand special consideration here. The 

 species may be designated as " sea toads." 



The fishes here called " sea toads " are generally known to the in- 

 habitants of most British tropical colonies as " toad fishes," but in 

 Jamaica and some other West Indian islands sea toad is used, and 

 that quite apt name may be adoj^ted and contrasted with frog fish, a 

 name sometimes applied to the sargasso fish. There is a further apt- 

 ness from the fact that the sea toads contrast with the frog fishes in 

 a manner analogous to that manifest in the real toads and frogs, the 

 former having very rough skins and the latter smooth ones. As 

 every coast-frequenting American knows, toadfish is applied by 

 fishermen to a very different fish — the Opsanus of naturalists. 



Fig. 41. — A typical Antennarius (Antennarius now). After Jordan and Snyder. 



The sea toads are inhabitants of tropical seas, and especially of the 

 coralligenous zone, and in the environments characteristic of such 

 waters they find fitting homes, where accommodation and food are 

 alike secured. As the frog fishes, or sargasso fishes, are adapted by 

 their coloration to the peculiar conditions under which they live, so 

 are the sea toads to their different circumstances. Tlie brilliant scar- 

 let and other colors, which render them so conspicuous when seen in 

 the jars of a museum collection, are quite in harmony in their natural 

 home and assimilate the fishes to the brilliantly colored coral ani- 

 mals and the other organisms in the midst of which they lurk in 

 wait for prey. Their habits and behavior are best known through 

 observations made by the Rev. S. J. Whitmee in 1875, of captive indi- 

 viduals of the Antennarius coccineus and Antennarius midtiocellatus. 



The species are ill fitted for progression and most of their lives 

 are spent in coral growths wdiere they may find lodgment, and which 



