64 



of a large Characin. Several years ago Mr. Bertoni sent me one of these, 

 and it seems that I at once described it with much gusto. Later Mr. 

 Bertoni sent me another lot of minute fishes, and this summer I discov- 

 ered that two of these were taken from the gills of a Characin. I again 

 described them, of course, as a new genus and species. Still later I 

 found the totally forgotten original specimen and description carefully 

 laid away. 



Ribeiro, of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, caught another 

 very similar member of a related genus, Paravandellia, among the weeds 

 of the stream near San Louis de Caceres in the upper Paraguay Basin. 



With fishes as rare as these and as small as these, the question some- 

 times arises whether the differences are due to the fact that one worker 

 uses a hand lens and the other a binocular dissecting microscope with 

 an arc spotlight. The results of the two instruments are comparable 

 to the effects produced by an old-fashioned cannon and a modern forty- 

 two-centimeter howitzer. 



Two species I have just described with the three previously known, 

 brings the number of Vandellias up to five — maybe. I used a howitzer, 

 and my distinguished predecessors, Pellegrin, Castelnau, Valenciennes 

 and Cuvier used hand lenses. The Vandellias are long, slender, eel-like 

 in shape. There are really two genera in the genus Vandellia, but I 

 don't yet know which one of these Valenciennes had when he named 

 the genus. The other is, for the present, without a legitimate name. 

 When we know which one can legitimately lay claim to the name Van- 

 dellia the other one can be baptized as Urinophilus. One of these, pos- 

 sibly two of them if they are different, Vandellia liaseinavi and Vandellia 

 wieneri, is or are too large to enter the urethra of man when it is or they 

 are fully grown. On the other hand, VainUdlia cirrliosa, i^anyniiiea, and 

 plazai could, as far as their size is concerned, enter the urethra. Do 

 they? 



Pellegrin, who has written on this subject, quotes Dr. Jobert who 

 collected fishes in Brazil foi- the Jardin des Plantes. Jobert tells that 

 a highly reputable physician of Belem, Para, Dr. Castro, told him he had 

 taken a Candiru from the urethra of a negress. 



Boulenger (Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1897, p. 901) says of Van- 

 dellia cirrhosa: 



"The 'Candiru', as the fish is called, is much dreaded by the natives 



