26 THE AMERICAN CHARACIDAE. 



the family of Salmones: — Characinus, Curimatus, Anostomus, Serrasalmo, 

 Piabucus, Tetragonopterus, Myletes, Hydrocynus, Citharinus, and Gastero- 

 pelecus. 1 



In 1829, Memoires Museum d'histoire naturelle, 4, he further defined 

 Chalceus and in 1819, 6, apparently substituted Hydrocyon for Hydrocynus. 

 A great advance towards a knowledge of the South American Characinid fauna 

 was made by Spix and Agassiz in the Selecta genera et species piscium Brasiliensis, 

 1829. They defined Prochilodus Agassiz (= Pacu Spix), Anodus Spix, Lepori- 

 nus Spix, Schizodon Agassiz, Salminus Agassiz, Hiphorhynchus Agassiz ( = 

 Acestrorhynchus Eigenmann), Rhaphiodon Agassiz (= Cynodon Spix), and 

 Xiphostoma; they also described many new species. 



Up to this time and for several years later the Characins were distributed 

 among the Salmonids and Clupeids and the peculiar parallelism between some 

 of the genera of these families and the genera of the Characidae made such an 

 association seem natural. In 1842 Johannes Miiller in his treatise on the air- 

 bladder of fishes (Monatsb. Acad, wiss., Berlin, June 1842 and Arch. anat. u. 

 phys., 1842, p. 307) described the genera Macrodon (= Hoplias) and Hemiodus 

 and united all of the Characins in Ins new family Characinidae. 



In 1844 Miiller and Troschel published a synopsis of the known genera 

 (Wiegmann's archiv, 1844, 1, p. 81) and defined the new genera Chilodus, 

 Distichodus, Alestes, Brycon, Exodon, Epicyrtus, Hydrolycus, Pygocentrus, 

 Pygopristis, Catoprion, and Myleus. They followed this in 1845 by the first 

 monograph on the Characinidae, Die familie der Characinen (Horae Ichthyo- 

 logicae, 1, 2). Here all of the then known genera, including the new genus 

 Agoniates are described and the known species enumerated. This work by 

 Miiller and Troschel was up to that time by far the most important as well as 

 the most comprehensive work on the Characins. It is the first of three general 

 accounts that have appeared. In it were recognized thirty-one genera and 

 eighty-eight species. Of these twenty-seven genera and eighty species were 

 American, the remainder African. 



Miiller and Troschel's work was closely followed by the second revision of 

 the group. Cuvier and Valenciennes in the 19th (1846) and 22nd (1848) volumes 

 of their Histoire naturelle des poissons described many species and the genera 

 Lebiasina and Pyrrhulina, 19 and Parodon, Piabucina, Tometes, Mylesinus, 

 Chalcinus and Cynopotamus, 22. A retrograde step was taken in rejecting the 

 Characinidae and including the genera in the Salmonidae. 



1 Gasteropelecus is attributed to Bloch. 



