TENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 8I 
that at conventions or caucuses for nomination of local or town 
officers, the nominee for justice is one that will stand firm ‘and 
give the offender the full extent of the law. 
THE EEL QUESTION. 
BY PROF. G. BROWN GOODE.* 
NUMBER OF SPECIES OF EELS IN AMERICA. 
It is the disposition of American ichthyologists to accept, for 
the present, the views of Dareste, and to consider all the eels of 
the northern hemisphere as members of one polemorphic species. 
Gunther is inclined to recognize three species in North America : 
one the commen eel of Europe, Augulla vulgaris ; one the com- 
mon American eel, Anguilla bostoniensts, which he finds also in 
Japan and China; and the third, Anguilla texana, described and 
illustrated by Girard, in the Report of the United States and 
Mexican Boundary Survey, under the name of A. ¢exana, which, 
he remarks, is scarcely specifically distinct from A. dostontensts, 
from which it differs only in the greater development of the lips. 
The distinction between A. bostoniensis and A. vulgaris, as stated by 
him, consists chiefly in the fact that the dorsal fin is situated a 
little farther back upon the body, so that in the former the dis- 
tance between the commencement of the dorsal and anal fin is 
shorter than the head, while in the latter it is equal to or some- 
what longer than it. This character does not appear to be at all 
constant. ; 
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE EEL. 
‘We may therefore provisionally assume the identity of the eels 
of the old and the new world, and define their distribution some- 
what as follows: Inthe rivers and along the ocean shores of 
Eastern North America, south to Texas and Mexico, and north 
at least to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but absent in the waters 
tributary to Hudson Bay, the Arctic Sea and the Pacific ; present 
a i a ee ee eS ee eee 
*This paper, ina more extended form and with illustrations from anatomical designs, is pub- 
lished in the Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. I., 1881, pp. — to 124. 
