PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 493 
6. Nanostoma elegans, Hay, sp. nov. (No. 27,445.) 
Body stout and somewhat compressed. Head short and deep, with 
swollen cheeks. The snout is turned abruptly downward. The mouth 
is subterminal, horizontal, and small, the maxillary not reaching back 
to the vertical from the eee of “(8 orbit. Upper jaw not protractile. 
Eye in the head 4 times. 
Head in the length to caudal (as in all measurements in this paper) 4 
times; depth inlength 5. Depth of caudal peduncle twice in its length; 
this equal to three-tenths of the length of the body. 
Rows of scales 5-42-6. Lateral line complete, nearly straight. 
The formula of the vertical fins is D. X, 12; A. II, 8. The spinous 
dorsal slightly longer than the head, and half as high as long. Soft 
dorsal five-sixths as long as the head, and two-thirds as high as long. 
Anal three-fourths the length of the head, and as high as long, the pos- 
terior rays being the longest. 
The pectoral fins are very wide and long, reaching beyond the tips of 
the ventrals and to the vent. Candal fin emarginate. 
Cheeks, opercles, and back of the neck scaly; the chest and the re- 
gion just eed the ventrals ee Gill-membrane broadly connected 
across the breast. 
The general color of the body, after lying in spirits, is purple. Along 
the back are six large square blotches of black, and along the sides 
about eight bread transverse bars of the same color, but fainter; these 
least distinet forward. Along the lateral line, alternating with the 
transverse bars, are a number of spots, which, in the case of my largest 
specimen, are of a more intense color than the bars. These spots con- 
nect the bars, and with them form a dark lateral band. 
Besides these markings, many of the scales, both within and outside 
the dark bars, principally above the lateral line, but also below, have 
at their base a jet-black dot. These dots are so arranged as to form 
somewhat regular longitudinal lines. At the extremity of the caudal 
peduncle there is a small black spot just above the last transverse bar, 
and another below it. There are a few black spots behind the eye; a 
dark bar running from the eye downward, and another from the eye 
forward to the snout. 
Ventral and anal fins indigo-blue. Some of the same color on the 
pectorals. In life there is a bar of deep orange or red running along 
the base of both dorsals. The tips of the ventral rays in some speci- 
mens, males perhaps, are swollen. 
Length of longest specimen 2} inches. 
Taken in a shallow, rocky, and sandy branch of the Chickasawha 
River at Enterprise. 
The small, subinferior mouth, little compressed body, and widely con- 
nected gill-membrane ally this species to Nanostoma. The dorsal fins 
are separated as in Nothonotus. 
