GREGORY: FISH SKULLS 



305 



that in Tate Regan's diagnosis of the suborder Scombroidei (190%, p. 70), after exclusion 

 of the carangoids, "the characters with a few minor exceptions are characters of the percoid 

 fishes and spiny-rayed fishes in general, including the carangoids." After showing that 

 even the exceptions are variable in the Carangidae and Scombridae, Starks notes that "it 

 does not appear from Dr. Regan's paper why the other scombroids should not follow the 

 family Carangidae into the group of percoid fishes." He then cites important characters 

 in common to the two groups and favors retaining the old group of Scombroidei. 



Bra ma rayi 



Fig. 182. Brama rayi. 



Brama rayi is a moderately short-bodied fish of carangoid appearance. It would seem 

 to be a good starting-point for Coryphana especially in the skull (Fig. 182). 



Coryphcena. — To continue the subject of the relationship with each other of the car- 

 angoids and scombroids, it has been noted above that as regards vertebral characters 

 Coryphcena tends to divide the difference between the Carangidae and the Scombridae. 

 Thus it clearly suggests how the peculiar vertebral and rib characters of the latter, as 

 described by Boulenger (1910), have probably been derived from those of the former. The 

 skull of Coryphcena (Fig. 183) retains the protrusile premaxillae of the carangids, their dis- 

 tally developed sagittal crest, their stoutly developed parethmoid, their crested meseth- 

 moid and large osseus nari^l cavity. Its opercular has shared in the anteroposterior elonga- 

 tion of the body but is not unlike those of the carangids Scomberoides (Fig. 180) and 

 Oligoplites. Its opercular also differs from that of the true scombroids and resembles that 

 of the carangoids in being truncate at top and more produced at the lower end. The 



