EDIBLE FISHES OF QUEENSLAND.— OGILBY. 165 



Gill-rakers 6+5, short and stout. 



Upper surface of body pale olive brown, shading into silver gray on the 

 breast and abdomen; each scale of the back and sides with a light blue central 

 spot, and usually a much smaller dark basal spot, the upper and lower edges 

 narrowly dull gold, forming more or less continuous slender bars parallel to the 

 dorsal profile. Head dull violet or purplish above, with or without a broad 

 lighter cross-band between the eyes; cheeks gray, with a violet iridescence and 

 numerous small blue spots, which are not apparent until after death; preorbital 

 crossed by three light blue bands radiating from the eye, the first to the anterior 

 nostril, the second to the middle of the preorbital-edge, the third to the angle 

 of the mouth ; the first is constant, but the last two may be much curtailed in 

 iront or even reduced to a mere spot; a blue blotch sometimes present at the 

 ])Ostero-superior angle of the eye ; opercles blue-spotted ; inside of mouth orange, 

 of opercles scarlet, the colours greatly reduced or absent in the young. Fins 

 colorless, except the first and the basal third of the second pectoral rays, which 

 are blue. 



In the freshly caught young fish there are three or five scale-wide dull 

 gold horizontal bands below the lateral line, the middle the longest and most 

 persistent, reaching to the peduncle ; an obscure dark blotch between the lateral 

 line and the appressed pectoral, and several narrow oblique cross-bands due 

 to the darkening of the edges of certain series of scales. Dorsal fin with two rows 

 of dull gold spots anteriorly and three similar oblique bands posteriorly; caudal 

 Math traces of four dark cross-bands, which are most conspicuous at the outer 

 edges, {nehiilosus, clouded; the application is obscure.) 



Described from 3 Moreton Bay examples in the collection of the 

 Queensland Museum, measuring respectively 314, 223, and 215 raillim., two of 

 which were kindly presented by the officers of the Metropolitan Fish Market. 



Historical .-—The first notice of this fish was published by Forskal, who 

 assigned it to the Linnaean genus Scicena and, according to Valenciennes, gives 

 its Arabic name as "schaur. "^ From his time it does not appear to have been 

 again noticed until Ehrenberg rediscovered it at Massawa, on the Abyssinian 

 shore of the Eed Sea, where it was known by the same vernacular name as 

 Forskal reported from Jeddah. Giinther (1) extended its range to the Seychelles 

 (fide Valenciennes) and the Coast of Mozambique (fide Peters), but both these 

 references rightly belong to Lethrinus centurio Cuvier & Valenciennes,^ the 

 identity of which with our species, though possible, is by no means clear, while 

 the figure of L. esculentus' of the same authors, apparently an alternative name 

 of L. centurio, bears not the remotest resemblance to our fish. Subsequently, 

 however, Giinther (2) was able to record the species from Somerset, N.Q., this 

 being the earliest Queensland record, and even so far eastward as Levuka, an 

 island of the Fiji Group, which is, according to Jordan and Scale, the only 

 South Seas locality as yet noticed. Meanwhile Playfair had obtained the true 

 Lethrinus nehulosus from the Seychelles ; Day also had noted it from the Indian 



* Bonnaterre, ostensibly following Forskal, states that the name among the Arabians 

 is " abu-hamrur," but surely this should properly apply to the species which Forskal called 

 iScicena hamruhr, the Priacanthus hamruhr of modern writers. 



« Ibid., p. 301 ; Day, ibid. 



' Idd., pi. clviii. 



