RED BANDFISH. 197 



wards runs quite straight to the tail : skin smooth, but 

 when examined with a lens, appears finely and regularly 

 punctured. A specimen seven and a half inches long, for 

 which I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Couch, exhibits 

 here and there an occasional thin, oval, semi-transparent 

 scale. The irides are silvery with a tinge of crimson, pupils 

 bluish black ; gill-plates silvery. The body appears subject 

 to some variation in colour. One of Colonel Montagu's spe- 

 cimens was pale carmine, the second darker. Mr. Couch 

 had specimens of a pale red. A dried example from the 

 Mediterranean, now before me, is orange red : the Cornish 

 specimen, preserved in spirits, has lost colour, and is now 

 greyish orange. Brunnich, describing the colour of his 

 Cepola rubescens, calls it pallide carneum, pale flesh colour ; 

 and M. Risso says it is the colour of the red oxide of mer- 

 cury. In the first edition of his work, M. Risso includes 

 two species of this genus, C. tania and C. rubescens ; in the 

 second edition, rubescens only is retained. Brunnich, in a note 

 at the end of his description of rubescens, asks, Is this fish 

 distinct from the tania of Linnseus, and how ? The latter 

 is said to be distinguished by a row of hard points along the 

 side, above the lateral line, and by an inner second row 

 of teeth on the lower jaw. My Mediterranean specimen, 

 thirteen inches long, has the rough line just below the base 

 of the dorsal fin, and a second row of six small teeth within 

 the lower jaw. 



In reference to the first of these distinctions, it is essential 

 to remark, that Mr. Couch, in his description in the Linnean 

 Transactions of a Cornish specimen fifteen inches long, says, 

 " Besides the lateral line, there was a row of small bony 

 prominences near the dorsal fin ;" and that in the smaller 

 Cornish specimen sent to me by Mr. Couch, there is a 

 single tooth in the lower jaw on the line of the second row 



