378 



L'EFISION OF SEBASTIX.Tl—EIGENMANN AXD BEESOX. vol. xvii. 



Ill 1885 Dr. Jordau* again separated the genus Sebastodes from tlie 

 otlier species wliicli remained united under the name Sehastichfhys. 



More recently EigeunuinUjt after describing ^.goodei, remarked "the 

 genus Sebastodes will either have to be merged w itli Schaslichthys or 

 the latter divided into other genera." The material for this further 

 division was not at hand at tlie time and Sehastodes was adopted as 

 defined by Jordan and Gilbert. The present examination of skulls has 

 shown that the intergradation of the armature of the head noticed by 

 them is of secondary importance only, and largely due to their arrange- 

 ment of the species to emphasize this intergradation in armature, and 

 that, as soon as the large number of species are separated on the more 

 essential relation of the parietals to the supraoccipital, the intergrada- 

 tions largely vanish, and the groups originally dehned by Gill come to 

 the foreground as valid genera, with the addition of several other 

 genera. An outline of the classification, here more fully treated, was 

 published by us in the American K^aturalist for July, 1893. 



The interrelation of the various genera is complex. Our conception 

 of it may be illustrated by the following diagram, the genera with 

 united parietals being marked with an asterisk. 



Auctospina. 



Sebastichthys* 



Acutomentum* 



Pteropodus 



Sebastomus 



Sebastodes 



Sebastosomus* 



Primospina* 



The hist general account of these forms to appear was that of Jordan 

 and Gilbert in the Synopsis of the Fishes of North America. At 

 that time only about 30 species were known. Since then about 20 

 species have been dcvscribed. This large increase in the number of 

 known species, and tlie observed incongruity of grouping were the 

 chief agents leading to the present revision, which we hope to be a 

 step in the right direction. The synonymy is all simple, and the species 

 have been for the most part well described. We have therefore omit- 

 ted any further discussion of the former and confined the descriptions 

 to the keys. 



*Cat. Fish. N. Am., 1885; Rept. IT. S. Comr. of Fish and Fisheries, 1884 (1885). 

 tProc. Cal. Acad. Sci., 2nd ser., iii., p. 12, 1890. 



