THE COMMON BRITISH STURGEON. 21 



some points of difference which prevent us from pro- 

 nouncing on their identity without further investigation. 

 The specific marks they assign to their sturio are, " pre- 

 maxillary lip with an incurvature, short barbels, osseous 

 centres of the temporals nearer to the point of the snout 

 than those of the coronals ; the process of the occipital 

 shield that interposes between the ends of the coronals 

 broad and chisel-shaped or truncated, and the coracoid 

 bucklers roughly granulated, not rayed." Supposing 

 these characters to be constant, the last-mentioned one and 

 the truncation of the salient process of the occipital do not 

 correspond with those parts in the British fish. The skin 

 also of the Austrian Sturio is described as being studded 

 with rough, blunt ossicles, mostly uniform in size, being 

 merely a little larger near the head, but nowhere either 

 radiated or stellate. In the form of the dermal ossicles 

 the Frith of Forth Sturgeon agrees with the Antacei 

 rather than with the Sturiones, but not with any of the 

 six Antacei figured in Heckel and Kner's book. The 

 inflexion of the upper lip belongs to all these Antacei 

 except A. schypa. 



Respecting the young, the Austrian authors so often re- 

 ferred to say that Ae. sturio, when not exceeding ten inches 

 in length, has a stiletto-shaped snout bent upwards, the 

 occipital enters further between the coronals ; in place of 

 the interfrontal shields there is a fontenelle, and the under 

 anterior caudal lobe is not developed. In the Museum 

 of the Free Kirk College at Edinburgh there is a Stur- 

 geon, about eighteen inches long, which may probably 

 be the young of the Frith of Forth species, described at 

 such length in the preceding pages. It has a slender, 

 elongated snout, evidently greatly shrunk in drying, but 

 the arrangement of the cranial shields has much resem- 

 blance to that which exists in the older fish. The inter- 



