PISCES. 133 



Family XXX. Labroidei. Lower pharyngeal "bone unpaired 

 and without longitudinal suture ; pharyngeal teeth globose, thick 

 or lamellose, oval, tranverse, placed in transverse rows. Mouth with 

 fleshy lips. Dorsal fin single, supported anteriorly by spines, 

 posteriorly by split rays, the spines often increased by a filiform 

 appendage. Ventral fins placed under pectorals. Body oblong, 

 covered with cycloid scales; Pseudobranchia3. Branchiostegous 

 membrane with five rays, in few with six. 



Lip-fishes. As the Pleuronectce are soft-firmed fishes, which be- 

 long to the Ctenolepidoti, so this family with some others forms an 

 exception amongst the spine-finned fishes, which usually have 

 toothed or spined scales, and is provided with smooth-margined 

 (cycloid) scales. A primary character, which also occurs in the two 

 preceding families, consists in the unpaired inferior os pliaryngeale ; 

 but from both the preceding the present family is distinguished by 

 the large, blunt teeth which cover that bone as well as the upper 

 ossa pharyngealia in form of a pavement. (See the bones figured in 

 Scarus, OWEN'S Odontography, PL 51.) 



The fourth branchial arch has branchial leaflets on the fore side 

 alone; the fourth gill is thus only a half gill (see above, p. 33). 

 All the fishes of this family live in the sea. 



Near the Labroidei seems to be the place for some new species 

 of fishes from San Francisco, Hollonoti. Comp. GIBBONS and 

 GIRARD Archivfur Naturgesch. XXL 1 (1855) s. 331 341, 342 

 354. 



Scariis FORSK., GMEL. (excl. of some spec.). Jaws rather pro- 

 minent, convex, covered with teeth grown together imbricately. 

 Fleshy lips simple. Pharyngeal teeth transverse, vertical laminae, 

 arranged in lower pharyngeal bone in alternating rows. Body 

 covered with large scales. Lateral line branched, interrupted. 



Parrot-fish. The articular portion of the lower jaw (os articulare, p. 27) is 

 connected with the anterior portion (the os dentale) by a joint, so that it has 

 here a moveable connexion at both extremities, and not at the upper part 

 alone, with the jugal bone (p. 21). In the dental piece there is a cavity on 

 each side, which serves for the joint. 



The species are very numerous, and we may reckon the species now 

 known at about one hundred, of which a fourth part are at home around 

 the Sunda Isles and in the Moluccan Archipelago. They keep principally 

 upon the coral reefs. 



