160 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



VOL. 39. 



acters are furnished by the skeleton. The abdominal vertebrae (except 

 the first two) have robust transverse processes to which the ribs are 

 attached; the cranium is more or less compressed behind the orbits, 

 the occipital region is declivous backward, and the intermaxillaries 

 coimect by close suture with the ethmoid as in the Blennies. 



r 



-riHymt.^^ 



Fig. 3.— Lycichthys paucidens, shoulder girdle. Fig. 4.— Anarrhichthys ocellatus, shoulder 



GIRDLE. 



They differ from the Blennies by the dentition, the enlargement 

 of the vomer for a dental armature, the extension downwards of a 

 parasphenoid keel, the approximation of the exoccipital condyles, 

 and more especially in the composition of the shoulder-girdle. The 

 suprascapular bones are simple (unforked); the hypercoracoid and 

 hypocoracoid normal, save that they are small and separated by the 

 interposition of the four actinosts which are squarish 

 or irregularly formed; the uppermost one is much 

 reduced. The pelvis is represented b}^ a Y-shaped 

 piece whose limbs are foremost, lie on the upper sur- 

 face of tlie coenosteon, and connect with the anterior 

 ridges of the latter." 



The genera have been combined by Doctor Bou- 

 lenger (as well as by most other European ichthy- 

 ologists) with the Blenniidae under that family name, 

 although he has attributed to the family a suprascapula or "post- 

 temporal forked" and "hour-glass-sbaped pterygials" or actinosts. 

 These attributes are certainly not manifest in any of the Anarrhi- 

 chadids and must have been assumed for them in consequence of the 

 previous assumption of their close relationship to the Blenniids. 



X , ; f 



Fig. .j. Lycichthys 

 scale. After 

 Thorn am (Gai- 



M ARD). 



a Skeletons of Anarrhichas lupus, Lycichthys denticulatus, and Anarrhichthys ocellatus 

 are before me. 



