Dr. A. Gunther on the History o/Echeneis. 393 



latter author has heen extensively copied by Shaw (Zool. iv. 

 p. 202, pi. 31), and he too gives an EngHsh translation of the 

 passage in Phny. The drawings accompanying all these ac- 

 counts were more or less rough and imperfect; and it is Blu- 

 menbach's and Kosenthal's merit to have given for the first time 

 iigures which may be called scientific representations of the fish 

 and of its skeleton (Abbilduniren, taf. 78, and Rosenth. Ich- 

 thyotom. Tafeln, taf. 20. figs. 1-8). 



Risso adds nothing to our knowledge of the habits * of the 

 fish, but, in the ' Histoire Naturelle de I'Europe Meridionale ' 

 (iii. p. 270) he describes a remarkable variety, or even species, 

 from the ^Mediterranean, with a sucker composed of twenty la- 

 mina?, — a number which I have never met with. He separates 

 this fish from the E. remora, L., and applies to it the name of 

 E. naucrates ; it is, however, evident that Risso did not know 

 the true E. naucrates ; and his fish must be closely allied to E. 

 remora, having twenty-two rays in the dorsal and anal fins. I 

 have mentioned above, that Bloch also admits that the lamina 

 vary from sixteen to twenty in E. remora. 



An attempt to distinguish new specific forms from the Lin- 

 npean E. remora has been made by Lowef. He found that the 

 lunate caudal was not a character common to all specimens, and 

 that, moreover, in some the tongue was covered with asperities, 

 and in others smooth. He called those with a truncated caudal 

 Echeneis jacohcea, and those with a rough tongue Echeneis jmU 

 Ma, considering the specimens M'ith lunate caudal and smooth 

 tongue as E. remora, L. Having had apparently but few speci- 

 mens for examination, he was induced to use differences in the 

 number of the laminre of the sucker as additional specific cha- 

 racters. But the difference between the extreme forms of the 

 caudal fin is not great : every possible degree of emarijina- 

 tion between those extremes may be observed ; the most deeply 

 notched caudal and the most truncated one do not correspond 

 with a certain number of lamince; the caudal, in fact, never has 

 a posterior margin which forms a straight vertical line; and, 

 finally, the same fin undergoes, with age, the greatest changes 

 possible in E. naucrates, as we shall see afterwards. The struc- 

 ture of the surface of the tongue has no more specific value than 

 the form of the caudal. Specimens with distinct asperities on 

 the tongue are comparatively scarce ; this character is merely 



* He describes them in rather general terms, and it may be interesting 

 to quote his own words : " Phis inertes qu'eutreprenants, ils n'ont que des 

 desirs modcrcs ; plus indolents que courageux, ils se lixeut sur les quilles, 

 ou autour des btitimens, et trainent ainsi une vie laugoureuse et miserable." 

 E. remora, Risso, Ichth. Nice, p. 177. and Eur. Mcrid. iii. p. 269. E. 

 naucrates, Risso, Eur. Merid. iii. p. 2/0. 



t Proc. Zool. Soc. 1839, p. 89, 



