FAMILY CLVPIDJE. 269 



GENUS AMIA. Linneus. 



Small paved teeth behind the acute conical ones. Head flattened, naked, with conspicuous 

 sutures. Twelve flat gill-ratjs. A large long buckler between the branches of the lower 

 jaw. Dorsal long. Anal short. Air-bladder cellular, like the lungs of reptiles. 



THE WESTERN MUD-FISH. 



Amia occidentalis. 

 PLATE XXXIX. FIG. 125, and Outline or the Head. — (CABINET OF THE LYCEUM.) 



Characteristics. Dark brown ; elongated. Lateral line tubular. Tail unspotted. Length 

 two feet. 



Description. Body cylindrical, elongated. Scales large, thin and membranous, with im- 

 pressed concentric strias ; oblong, and with their radical and free margins rounded ; on the 

 back, the radical margins bifid. Lateral line distinct, tubular, arising from the upper angle 

 of the opercle ; thence descending by a gentle curve to the middle of the body, under the an- 

 terior portion of the dorsal fin ; thence straight to the tail. Head broad, flattened above. 

 Depth one-fifth of its length. Opercles bony, scaleless, corrugated. Eyes moderate, longi- 

 tudinally oblong. Nostrils single, somewhat above the plane of the upper orbit, and nearer 

 the eye than the end of the jaw. Jaws broad and rounded ; the lower slightly advanced. 

 Series of conic, acute, incurved teeth on the jaws and palatines ; those on the sides of the 

 upper jaw small, subequal ; in front, longer ; and behind these last, a large group of smaller 

 ones closely crowded : the outer row in the lower jaw very robust, and much incurved. Four 

 or five irregular series of short and smaller ones behind. 



The dorsal fin originates ten inches behind the tip of the upper jaw, and, with its forty-six 

 rays, reaches to within an inch of the base of the caudal fin. The first two or three rays of 

 this fin short ; the remaining rays subequal, but from the thirtieth to the fortieth, rather more 

 elevated. Pectorals beneath the angle of the humeral bone, with seventeen rays, of which 

 the first and second are shorter than the third. Ventrals long and narrow, with one short 

 spinous and eight articulated rays ; the longest ray 2*6, and placed under the twelfth ray of 

 the dorsal fin. Anal high and narrow, with eleven rays, the anterior rays becoming gradually 

 longer to the sixth. Caudal fin rounded, with eighteen broad and flat complete rays ; the acces- 

 sory rays are four above and six beneath, giving an irregular configuration to that fin. Small 

 scales ascend some distance up the membrane. 



Color. Of this I can say nothing, as I had only a dried specimen. It appears, however, to 

 have been of a uniform dark brown. 



Length, 28-0; of the head, 5-5. 



Fin rays, D. 46; P. 17; V. 9 ; A. 11; C. 19 |. 



