456 Proceedings of Philosophical Societies. [Dbc. 



in the bottom of the sea they escape observation, and even when 

 they are caught they are seldom compared together ; so that a 

 single species may have been seen by different observers, and have 

 passed each time for new, when the first descriptions of it were not 

 sufficiently complete, or when naturalists neglected to collect and 

 study them. 



M. Cuvier has presented to the Class some researches on fish thus 

 forgotten, or multiplied in the catalogues of naturalists. One of 

 these, remarkable for its great size, well known in Italy by the 

 names of umbra and fegaro, and in Languedoc by that of poisson 

 royal, was formerly well known at Paris by the name of maigne. 

 It even gave origin to some popular proverbs. At present, from 

 unknown causes, it has become rare in the English Channel, and 

 therefore is scarcely brought to the capital. The naturalists of the 

 sixteenth century have described it very well ; and Duhamel, in the 

 eighteenth century, treated of it at great length 3 yet our systematic 

 authors have either given it as new, or have confounded it with 

 smaller and more common species. Besides an external description 

 of it, M. Cuvier has given its anatomy, aiul particularly that of its 

 swimming bladder, which is very curious, on account of the 

 branched productions placed along its two sides. 



Another species, which has been multiplied six-fold in the works 

 of naturalists, and constituted into as many distinct species, is a 

 small fish of the Mediterranean, which, from its red colour and 

 general form, has been called roi des rougets or rouget hnberbe 

 (mullus imberbis, Linn.; apagon rouge, Lacep.), but which has 

 more relation to the perches than the rougets. 



M. Noel de la Moriniere, who has been employed for some years 

 on a treatise on useful fishes, has presented to the Class a memoir 

 nearly of the same nature as the two preceding, in which he gives 

 the history of a species much neglected by naturalists, though so 

 numerous at certain seasons in the Gulf of Gascon y, that the 

 fishers of the lle-Dieu alone catch every year more than 14,000 

 individuals, weighing each from 30 to 80 pounds.* It is the germon 

 or grande oreille of the French sailors, or ala-longa of the fishers 

 of Sardinia {scomber ala-longa, Gm.),* so called because the 

 principal character which distinguishes it from the tunny (scomber 

 thy7ivus) consists in pectoral fins extremely long and pointed. 

 Commcrson having found at Madagascar a fish possessing the same 

 characters, gave it the name of germon, and has been followed in 

 this by Count Lacepcde ; so that the germon of Europe is now 

 particularly distinguished by the name of ala-longa. It remained 

 to be known if the Luiopean and Madagascar germon be one and 

 the same species. The distance of situation made the contrary 

 probable; and M. Geoffroi St. Hilaire has ascertained that this is 

 the case by comparing the figure of the second left by Commerson 



* Gmelin having written by mistake ala-twiga, this corruption has made its wny 

 into most subsequent books. 



