EDIBLE FISHES OF QUEENSLAND.— OGILBT. 151 



waters. On this account the gift of one for the purpose of this work l)y the 

 authorities of the Australian Museum is the more commendable, and our thanks 

 proportionately the greater. 



Historical: — The earliest published notice of this species is that of 

 Lacepede, whose description was taken from a drawing by Commerqon, which 

 he also reproduced. This specimen was captured at Fort Dauphin, ]\I:adagascar 

 as we learn fom Valenciennes who, more fortunate than his predecessor, was 

 able to draw up his descri])tion direct from certain Commerconian manuscripts, 

 which were not available to Lacepede. Meanwhile, however, under the name of 

 Ccesiomorus quadripunctatus, Riippell had described and figured the same species 

 from the port of INIassawa on the Abyssinian littoral of the Red Sea. Under this 

 specific name Valenciennes records it separately from examples obtained by 

 Dussumier in the Seychelles Archipelago, but he is careful to point out its close 

 resemblance to Trachinotus hailloni. After an interval of nearly twenty years 

 we find our fish in evidence as occurring in the '' Sea of Pinang"-^ where, accord- 

 ing to Cantor, " a single individual was taken in June, 1845, while unusually 

 strong southerly winds prevailed. ' ' His specimen measured 197 millim. and was, 

 so the local fishermen asserted, " of very rare occurrence." A couple of years 

 later Bleeker announced the receipt of specimens from Ceram, which eventually 

 proved to be the most easterly point from which he received it, and from that 

 time on records of its occurrence in various islands of the Malay Archipelago 

 became frequent. The publication of the British Museum Catalogue of Fishes 

 in 1860 provided an important increase in the eastern range of the species, Dr. 

 Giinther being in a position to announce that the National Museum had acquired, 

 through the medium of the Museum of Economic Geology, a fine specimen from 

 Tanna, one of the larger islands in the southern half of the New Hebrides 

 Group.^- In 1865 Bleeker enlarged its distribution northward to the Coast of 

 Siam and Day recorded it from Cochin on the Malalmr Coast of India. Day's 

 record is, however, more or less impaired by his inability at that time ro 

 distinguish between these two closely allied species; his synonymy (Fishes of 

 Malabar) indubitably includes both species, but his description of the position 

 of the lateral spots, i.e. — "on the lateral line there are four or five large black 

 spots more or less distant, the first one opposite the end of the pectoral," as 

 undoubtedly refers to this species. His account of the habits might have been 

 penned as a description of those of T. hotia as we know them on our own shores, 

 and doubtless applies with equal justice to either species. He writes — " This 

 fish is uncommon, and is usually captured by cast-nets in the surf, where the 

 fishermen assert it always swims; it is very rarely taken in the deep sea and 

 never in the rivers." Eleven years later, when the second part of his Fishes of 

 India w^as produced, we find that he has altered his opinion as to the validity of 

 the two species, of both of which he gives a recognisable figure and description. 

 Leaving out the question of coloration he relies principally for the separation 

 of the species — on the smaller number of anal rays, the longer ventral fins, and 

 the shorter caudal fin in T. hotla than in T. hailloni. If we attempt a general 

 analysis of these three characters from the specimens to which we have access we 



2^ The island of Piilo Pinang or Prince of Wales Island, to which this refers, lies off the 



West Coast of the Malay Peninsula in lat. 5° N. 



22 Since Jordan & Seale (Fishes of Samoa, p. 235) deny by implication the presence of 

 T. russellii {=botla) in any of the islands of the South Pacific, it follows that in all probability 

 this is a true T. bailloni. 



