EDIBLE FISHES OF QUEENSLAND.— OGILBY. 157 



specimens having been taken at Jeddah and Loliaia on the Arabian shore of 

 the Red Sea, In no event, however, conld this name have stood, for Linnaeus' 

 Labrus falcatus, from the East Coast of the Americas, is also a Trachmotus, 

 and so closely allied to the present species that Giinther united them under the 

 earlier name ovatus. Lacepede, in the third volume of his Histoire Naturelle, 

 described the species by no less than three distinct generic and specific names. He 

 first proposed the genus Trachiuotus, which is now universally recognised, basing 

 it on Forskal's Sconiher falcatus, and within a few pages redescribed it as 

 Ccesiomorus hJocMi, from a drawing by Commercon of a fish taken at Fort 

 Dauphin, Madagascar. Finally he assigned it to his genus Centronotus, of which 

 Linnffius' Gasterosteus ductor is tjie type, as C. ovalis. In the following year 

 Russell described and figured it from the Coromandel Coast of India under the 

 name "Mookalee Parah." Riippell, some twenty-five years later, recorded it 

 under Lacepede 's first name from Massawa and observes that it is common in 

 wiiiter. Valenciennes records it under six different names. In his first 

 essay he describes it as Trachinotus mooJ;alec from specimens sent to Paris 

 by Messrs. Leschenault from Pondicherry — where, he stated, it was rarely 

 taken but occurred at all seasons of the year — and Dussumier from Malabar^ 

 recognising in it Russell 's species mentioned above ; the reason for the change 

 of name is not, however, apparent, since he correctly identifies that fish with 

 the Gasterosteus ovatus of Linnaeus. He next notices it as T. hlochii, stating that 

 his diagnosis is taken from '^'a more accurate description which we have found 

 in the newly discovered papers of Commergon." As T. aifinis and T. falciger 

 he redescribed it from specimens collected by Dussumier on the Malabar Coast, 

 and again as T. drepanis from a small example obtained by the same collector 

 at the Seychelles, where it was reported as abundant. Finally he recorded it 

 from the Red Sea as T. falcatus, his description following those of Forskal and 

 Riippell, In 1845 Richardson gave it yet another name, T. auratus, from 

 examples captured at Canton, noting, however, its close affinity to T. mookalec, 

 under which name Cantor records it from the Sea of Pinang. where it appears 

 to be scarce, as he only met with two young examples during his three and a half 

 years' residence there. Up to the date of the issue of the second volume of 

 Giinther 's Catalogue Bleeker also identified the Malayan fish as T. mooTialee, 

 under which name he records it from numerous localities, as too he subsequently 

 did under T. ovatus. To Dr. Giinther belongs the credit of first definitely 

 associating our fish with the Linna-an G. ovatus, but he made the mistake of 

 uniting the Atlantic and Indo-Paeific species, which are better kept separate, the 

 former as T. falcatus, the latter as T. ovatus, though it must be allowed that the 

 differences are but slight.-^ Giinther mentions a specimen in the British Museum 

 as being from Australia, and this is, so far as I can ascertain, the earliest notice 

 of the species from the seas of the Commonwealth; in the same list he records 

 an example taken by IMacgillivray at Aneiteum, New Hebrides. No further 

 information regarding its distribution came to hand until sixteen years later, 

 when Giinther, in the Fische der Siidsee, announced its presence in the Samoan 

 Group on the authority of the Rev. S. J. Whitmee, but added that it was rare 



2* Comparing the latest available detailed description of the Atlantic fish (Jordan & 

 Evermann, Fish. North & Mid. America, p. 941) with the above I find the following differences : — 

 Maxillary extending to below middle of eye, 2-67 in head : anal lobe shorter, about i-S in body- 

 length ; ventral short, 3 in head . . . . , . , . . . . . . • falcatus. 



Maxillary extending to below anterior border of pupil, 3 in head ; anal lobe longer, 3-8 or more 

 in body -length ; ventral longer, 2-5 or more in head .. ., .. ,, ovatus. 



