356 Dr. Richardson's Contributions to 



slightly larger than the rest. The eye is small, placed high up, and 

 equidistant from the edge of the upper lip and tip of the gill-flap, but 

 more remote from the under edge of the interoperculum. The ante- 

 rior nasal orifice is incapable of admitting more than the point of a 

 fine needle ; the posterior one is larger and of an oval shape. There 

 are seven rows of small roundish depressed scales on the cheek, not 

 touching each other ; they increase a little in size as they approach 

 the temple, and the rows there are reduced to two. Five irregularly 

 tiled vertical rows of larger scales cover the bony operculum and 

 suboperculum, increasing in size as they recede from the preoper- 

 culum. The gill-cover ends in a projecting rounded thin mem- 

 branous lobe, beneath which there is a conspicuous curved notch, 

 formed by a narrowing of the suboperculum and the expansion of 

 the very thin edge of the wide interoperculum. A single row of 

 six small scales runs along the upper part of this bone, immediately 

 beneath the edge of the preoperculum. The angle of the suboper- 

 culum is widely rounded, its edge slightly detached and very entire, 

 and its surface somewhat uneven and porous. The suprascapular 

 region is marked out by a patch of scales of smaller size than those 

 of the body. The lateral line is traced on the fourth row of scales, 

 taking into the reckoning the row of smaller scales which forms the 

 wall of the groove in which the dorsal stands. It runs parallel to 

 the curve of the back until near the end of the dorsal, when it gra- 

 dually assumes a straight course through the tail. Thirty scales 

 enter into its composition, and the arbuscle on the disc of each 

 consists anteriorly of six branches, mostly inclining upwards and 

 seldom divided : posteriorly the branches are fewer, and near the 

 caudal fin the line is formed by a straight tube almost continuous 

 from scale to scale, and having a few very short and slender branch- 

 lets diverging from it upwards and downwards at right angles. This 

 composition of the lateral line is much like that of Cossyphus schcen- 

 leinii of Agassiz (C. and V. xiii. p. 143), which further nearly agrees 

 with our fish as well as -wlthLabrus macrodontus and L.japonicus in 

 the numbers of the fin-rays. Short crowded streaks are faintly 

 visible with a lens on the edges of the scales, and similar striae are 

 more plainly seen towards the bases of the uncovered discs of the 

 paler scales on the lower parts of the body. 



Rays :— B. 6 ; D. \2,\7 ; A. 3|10 ; C. 12f ; P. 15 ; V. l|5. 

 Though the normal number of gill-rays of the Labri be only five, 

 the specimen here described, which consists of the right side of the 

 fish, has six that can be reckoned without risk of mistake. In 

 the recent fish the gill- membrane must be greatly concealed by the 

 dilated interoperculum. The spinous rays of the dorsal, anal and 

 ventral fins are all moderately strong and pungent. The dorsal ones 

 are overtopped by small membranous processes ; the height of the 

 fin augments gradually up to the penultimate branched ray, which is 

 the taUest, and forms an acute though not slender point, the last ray 

 being deeply divided and rounding it off behind : the first spine has 

 one-third of the length of the tallest jointed ray. The form of the 

 anal resembles that of the dorsal : its third spine is the strongest of 



