FAMILY CLUPIDE, 269 
GENUS AMIA. Linneus. 
Small paved teeth behind the acute conical ones. Head flattened, naked, with conspicuous 
sutures. Twelve flat gill-rays. A large long buckler between the branches of the lower 
jaw. Dorsal long. Anal short. Air-bladder cellular, like the lungs of reptiles. 
THE WESTERN MUD-FISH. 
AMIA OCCIDENTALIS, 
PLATE XXXIX. FIG. 125, anp OvuTLIne or THE HEAD.— (CABINET OF THE LYCEUM.) 
Characteristics. Dark brown; elongated. Lateral line tubular. Tail unspotted. Length 
two feet. 
Description. Body cylindrical, elongated. Scales large, thin and membranous, with im- 
pressed concentric strie; oblong, and with their radical and free margins rounded; on the 
back, the radical margins bifid. Lateral line distinct, tubular, arising from the upper angle 
of the opercle ; thence descending by a gentle curve to the middle of the body, under the an- 
terior portion of the dorsal fin; thence straight to the tail. Head broad, flattened above. 
Depth one-fifth of its length. Opercles bony, scaleless, corrugated. Eyes moderate, longi- 
tudinally oblong. Nostrils single, somewhat above the plane of the upper orbit, and nearer 
the eye than the end of the jaw. Jaws broad and rounded; the lower slightly advanced. 
Series of conic, acute, incurved teeth on the jaws and palatines; those on the sides of the 
upper jaw small, subequal; in front, longer; and behind these last, a large group of smaller 
ones closely crowded : the outer row in the lower jaw very robust, and much incurved. Four 
or five irregular series of short and smaller ones behind. 
The dorsal fin originates ten inches behind the tip of the upper jaw, and, with its forty-six 
rays, reaches to within an inch of the base of the caudal fin. The first two or three rays of 
this fin short; the remaining rays subequal, but from the thirtieth to the fortieth, rather more 
elevated. Pectorals beneath the angle of the humeral bone, with seventeen rays, of which 
the first and second are shorter than the third. Ventrals long and narrow, with one short 
spinous and eight articulated rays ; the longest ray 2°6, and placed under the twelfth ray of 
the dorsal fin. Anal high and narrow, with eleven rays, the anterior rays becoming gradually 
longer to the sixth. Caudal fin rounded, with eighteen broad and flat complete rays ; the acces- 
sory rays are four above and six beneath, giving an irregular configuration to that fin. Small 
scales ascend some distance up the membrane. 
Color. Of this I can say nothing, as I had only a dried specimen. It appears, however, to 
have been of a uniform dark brown. 
Length, 28°0; of the head, 5:5. 
Pintaysy Dota yees 175 V9; A. 11; C..19 4. 
