344 EDWARD'S MIDGE. CHAP. xvi. 



to the Linnean Society, in which case I should think 

 it only a piece of justice to affix your name to it." 



EDWARD'S MIDGE Couchia Edivardii. 



Mr. Couch accordingly prepared a paper for the 

 Linnean Society,* in which he embodied Edward's 

 description of the fish, and of its habits and habitat. 

 He also attached to it the name of Edward's Midge, 

 Couchia Edwardii. In the course of Mr. Couch's 

 paper, he says : 



" Long before tlie discovery of the Mackerel Midge as 

 a separate species, an account had been given by Colonel 

 Montagu of a kindred fish, which he supposed to be common 

 to the coast of Devonshire, and which he described as being 

 distinguished by the possession of a pair only of the frontal 

 barbs ; and yet for more than half a century this species 

 of Midge had remained in obscurity, until it was again 

 brought to light by the diligent and acute observation of Mr. 

 Thomas Edward of Banff, who found it in some abundance in 

 the Moray Firth, and kindly supplied the writer with ex- 

 amples, which enabled him to give an account of it, with a 

 figure, in the concluding portion of the fourth volume of his 

 History of the Fishes of the British Islands. The five-bearded 

 species had been already represented in a coloured figure in 

 the third volume of the same book, as also in Mr. Yarrell's 

 well-known volumes. But a vacancy still existed in the 

 analogy between the species of the nearly allied genera 



* Linnean Society 's Journal ; "Zoologj'," vol. ix. p. 38. 



