A REVIEW OF THE DISCOBOLOUS FISHES OF JAPAN. 
B}^ David Starr Jordan and John Otterbein Snyder, 
Of the Leland Stanford Junior University. 
In the present paper is given a review of the Discoboli ( Cyclopteridm 
and L) pa rid id ft;) found in the waters of Japan. It is leased on the 
collections made hy the writers in 1900, on the collections in the United 
States National Museum, and on the cpllections of the United States 
Fish Commission steamer AJhatross made during the same year, which 
have been deposited in the United States National Museum. 
The Discoboli are degenerate cottiform fishes, characterized as such 
by the presence of the suborbital stay. From related families they 
are separated by the obsolete myodome, by the reduced ventrals united 
to form a sucking disk or altogether wanting, and b}^ the little develop- 
ment of the spinous dorsal. 
The two families are thus separated: 
a. Body cavity large, caudal region short, skin prickly or smooth. .Cyclopterid.e, I. 
aa. Body cavity short, caudal region elongate, skin smooth Liparidid^e, II. 
Family I. CYCLOPTERID^E. 
THE LUMP SUCKERS. 
Body short and thick, more or less elevated, covered with a thick 
skin, which is smooth, tubercular, or spinous ; head short and thick; 
suborbital stay present, thin and flatfish; mouth small, terminal; jaws 
with bands of slender, simple teeth; no teeth on vomer or palatines; 
gill openings narrow, restricted to the sides, the membranes being 
broadly joined to the isthmus and shoulder girdle; branchiostegals 6; 
gills 3i; pseudobranchise present; dorsal tins 2, the anterior part of 
flexible spines, which, in the adult, are sometimes hidden by a fleshy 
hump, in one subfamily entirelj^ wanting; soft dorsal usually opposite 
the anal and similar to it; caudal fin rounded, free from the dorsal and 
anal; ventrals thoracic, rudimentary, forming the bony center of a 
sucking disk; pectorals short, placed low, their bases broad and pro- 
current; pyloric cteca numerous; intestine elongate; vertebne 12+16, 
Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. XXIV— No. 1259. 
343 
