NO. 1714. JAPANESE SEA BASS.— JORDAN AND RICHARDSON. 455 



opercular angle little salient, armed with 4 or 5 moderate points, 

 directed backwards and downwards; opercular spines nearly equi- 

 distant; gill-rakers 11+3 or 4 rudiments. Cheeks, opercles, top of 

 head, suborbitals, lower jaws, and chin covered with fine scales; 

 maxillary smooth Dorsal origin in front of insertion of pectoral a 

 distance equal to two-thirds diameter of eye; longest dorsal spine 

 2.9 in head; longest soft ray 1.25 in length of soft dorsal; caudal 

 rounded; pectorals 1.8 in head; ventrals 2.15. 



Color in spirits light reddish brown; body marked by 5 or 6 

 obliquish-longitudinal broken band or blotches of darker color; a 

 V-shaped band on occiput with the limbs of the V directed forward, 

 one to each eye; a saddle-like blotch before dorsal, as wide as eye, 

 extending forward on each side from gill-opening to eye as a narrower 

 band; a wide band originating between fifth and eighth dorsal spines 

 and tapering obliquely forward to flap of opercle; two narrower 



A^''' ''"m^ 



Fig. 11.— Epinephelus morrhua. 



bands beginning at front and back of soft dorsal and converging for- 

 ward to meet under the seventh dorsal spine whence a single narrow 

 stripe is continued forward across the opercle to the eye; a narrow 

 broken stripe (or row of spots) extending from caudal peduncle 

 forward across side on level of pectoral to a point below eye; a faint 

 band across lower part of opercle; bands that abut on dorsal fins 

 extending more or less into the fin-membranes; caudal, anal, ventrals, 

 and pectorals plain. 



Of this species we have one specimen, 9.5 inches long, from off 

 Tokyo, collected by Professor Otaki. It is evidently the poBcilo- 

 notus of Temminck and Schlegel, but we can not separate the 

 Japanese form from the Indian species called Epinephelus morrhua. 

 Should the latter form prove different the present species will stand 

 as Epinephelus poecilonotus. 



{morrhua, the cod-fish.) 



