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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



VOL. 37. 



spinous dorsal; profile steep, slightly angled over eye; mouth large, 

 oblique; lower jaw scarcely projecting. Jaws, vomer, and palatines 

 with bands of villiform teeth; tongue without teeth; posterior nos- 

 tril enlarged; angle of preoperculum obtuse, its upper limb without 

 conspicuous serratures, lower with about 8 strong teeth; opercular 

 spines moderate, the middle one strongest; middle and upper spines 

 often bluntish or bi- or tri-furcate; gill rakers 21, 2 or 3 rudiments, 

 with knob-like tips. Cheeks scaled; opercles with a few scales pos- 

 teriorly; much of operculum, preoperculum, infraorbital, and supra- 

 orbitral regions bare and rugose. Second dorsal spine longest, 1.6 

 in head; longest soft ray 1.75; caudal rounded; pectoral broadly 



Fig. 2.— Piploprion bifasciatus. 



rounded, 1.6 in head; ventrals long, reaching past vent, 1 to 1.2 in 

 head. 



Color in spirits yellow, with two broad cross-bands of blackish 

 brown; first cross-band as wide as eye, passing across nape in front 

 of dorsal, through eye, and to lower border of preopercle; second 

 about four times width of eye, originating between sixth dorsal 

 spine and fifth soft ray and passing obliquely downward, striking 

 the ventral line between tips of reflexed pectorals and middle of 

 anal; spinous dorsal blackish, paler forward ; ventrals dusky, blackish 

 toward tips; other fins plain yellow. 



Here described from specimens as follows: Hakata 1, 8^ inches; 

 Wakanoura 2, 7 to 8^ inches; Nagasaki 2, 6 inches. 



This species is occasionally taken on the shores of Kiusiu and 

 Shikoku in southern Japan and southward to China and India. 

 Doctor Doderlein got numbers in Kagoshima. 



