BEAUTIFUL BUT MILITANT. 33 
THE SERGEANT BAKER FAMILY. 
Sergeant Baker (Awlopus purpurissatus). 
a Piare IX, 
This handsome and excellent food-fish is distributed freely 
along the whole seaboard of New South Wales, where, in 
suitable localities, it may be captured by means of hook 
and line or the trammel-net.* It attains a length of over 
2 feet, and as a table fish is in great request. 
In form the body of this species is elongate and rounded. 
The male may be at once recognised by the fact that the 
second and third rays of the dorsal fin are produced into long 
filaments, about double the length of the head. 
As will be seen from the following description of the 
colors, taken from my “ Fishes of Australia,” the Sergeant 
Baker is very beautiful. The upper surfaces are purple, with 
a more or less prevailing tinge of red, and with the edges of 
the scales crimson; the top of the head being sometimes 
spotted with the same color. The back and sides have large 
irregular crimson spots or transverse bands, covering two or 
three scales in width, not reaching across the abdomen. . The 
sides are of a paler purplish-red than the back, and gradually 
merge into the pearly-white of the lower or abdominal surface. 
The dorsal and caudal fins are of a pale yellowish-red, obliquely 
banded with rows of crimson spots, which are irequently 
confluent on the caudal lobes. The adipose dorsal fin (which 
is characteristic of most of the species of the family Sco felide), 
is purple along its base and crimson on the upper portion. 
The anal fin is whitish, or of a pale straw-color ; having 
across it longitudinal orange bands. The ventral and pectoral 
fins are yellow, with crimson bands across them. 
Cucumber-Fish (Chlorophthalmus nigripinnis). 
This large-eyed fish is one of those of which little was 
known until the last few years. By the advent of the Trawling 
Expedition of the ‘‘ Thetis,” in February and March, 1898— 
* The design on the back of the cover of this work gives an idea of the 
working of the trammel-net, which is fully described in my ‘Fishes of Aus- 
tralia,” pp. 245 and 246. 
