224 The Philippine Journal of Science 1923 



angle of mouth ; pores on jaws in white spots, with a large white 

 spot before angle of mouth on lower jaw; sometimes a white 

 streak on upper jaw just in front of angle of mouth. 



I have examined four specimens in the Bureau of Science 

 collection, one of them being the type of Gymnothorax sama- 

 lensis, collected at Samal Island, in the Gulf of Davao, Mindanao ; 

 the others are without labels. They vary in length from 169 to 

 232 millimeters. One of them, a female ready to spawn, has 

 almost no trace of crossbars and is almost uniform brown, with 

 very pale belly and throat. Another specimen has the markings 

 exceedingly well developed, strongly contrasting with the spec- 

 imen just mentioned, and bears a remarkable resemblance in 

 color to G. richardsoni. 



This species may be distinguished in any color phase by its 

 characteristic jaw markings and its dentition. 



This is a small species, reaching a length of not more than a 

 third of a meter, and has a narrow, compressed body and tail. 

 It occurs throughout the East Indies to the Philippines on the 

 north and southeast to the Samoas and Tahiti. 



Since I wrote the above Mr. G. A. Lopez obtained a specimen 

 in December, 1922, at the barrio of Anajawan, on the southern 

 coast of Leyte. This specimen, which has a length of 268 milli- 

 meters, is a female with nearly mature eggs ; in coloration it is 

 very close to Bleeker's figure of G. sagenodeta. 



Gymnothorax zonipectis Seale. Plate 11, fig. 3. 



Gymnothorax zonipectis Seale, Occ. Papers Bishop Mus. 4 (1906) 7, 



fig. 1. 

 Gymnothorax indong Seale, Philip. Journ. Sci. § A 4 (1909) 491. 

 Mursena zonipectis Gunther, Fische d. Sudsee 3 (1910) 415, with 

 text figure; Weber and Beaufort, Fishes Indo-Austr. Arch. 3 

 (1916) 381, fig. 181. 

 Depth 19.25 in total length and 2.5 in head, which goes 7.7 

 times in entire length and 2.48 in trunk ; tail longer than head and 

 trunk together by almost three-fourths the length of head ; eyes 

 twice in snout and about 10 in head ; snout long, narrow, with 

 rounded tip, interorbital space equal to diameter of eye ; mouth 

 large with curved jaws so that it cannot close completely, and 

 opens much farther back on one side than on the other, its 

 greatest extent twice in head ; tube of anterior nostril nearly one- 

 third the length of snout ; posterior nostril over anterior margin 

 of iris ; dorsal low, its origin about one-sixth the length of head 



