Sphyrama barracuda; its Morphology, Habits, and History. 101 



not hesitate to call Sphyrcma. These skeletons are from the Eocene of 

 Monte Bolce in Italy. The first is called S. bolcensis, from its place of 

 discovery, and is based on a number of skeletons from different muse- 

 ums. The second is S. gracilis and several specimens are known. 

 These are reproduced herein as figures 23 and 24, plate vii. Attention 

 is called to the shape of the snout and to the upper teeth in figure 24, 

 and to the 24 vertebrae (the proper number) in figure 23. 



In 1901, the distinguished paleontologist Dr. A. S. Woodward 

 catalogued the Sphyraenid material in the British Museum and 

 reduced most of the previously described forms to synonymy. He 

 sets up three distinct species: Sphyrcena bolcensis, intermedia, and 

 sv£ssi. Six other species are quoted from earlier writers, but Wood- 

 ward thinks the material from which they were described to be so 

 imperfect (in one case consisting of a single tooth only) as not to justify 

 the erection of species upon it. All the valid material is from the 

 Eocene of Monte Bolce near Verona in northern Italy. Woodward 

 throws out Agassiz's S. amici from Mount Lebanon as not belonging 

 to this genus. 



NOMENCLATURE. 



The generic term Sphyrcena means hammer, according to Jordan 

 and Evermann (1896), and hence the barracuda is a hammer-fish — a 

 total misnomer since it resembles nothing so little as a hammer, as was 

 noted so long ago as 1554 by Salviani. This erroneous derivation and 

 interpretation seem to have come about somewhat as follows: The 

 naine Sphyrcena originated with Aristotle, who, in his "Natural History," 

 book IX, chapter 3, 6106, 5, simply names the fish. However, it will be 

 shown further on that the more common name among the Greeks was 

 cestra (a kind of light javeUn invented and used during the Persian war) 

 and also a goad or pointed stick. The word Sphyrcena apparently has 

 its origin in the word sphyra, a hammer, but sphyrcena has no use or 

 meaning other than as the name of the fish under consideration. This 

 statement is based on the authority of Professors Gildersleeve and 

 Miller of the Johns Hopkins University. The name cestra, however, 

 seems to be a definite allusion to the shape of the fish and its pointed 

 head. 



Our next authority is Pliny. In his "Natural History," book xxxii, 

 chapter 11, paragraph 54, he speaks of the fish "called sudis in Latin, 

 and in Greek sphyrcena, names which indicate the shape of its snout," 

 This sudis or sudes was a kind of javelin and also a kind of stake 

 somewhat pointed and hardened in the fire. Furthermore the col- 

 loquial name used along the Mediterranean shores of Italy, France, and 

 Spain to-day is spet or spetto. This term has already been used in 

 this paper in speaking of the European fish, and refers to the elongated 

 form and pointed snout. 



