176 KEPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 
mistake, and our private opinion is that no other species than the red 
mullet is a native fish”! Following up this fancy, under the caption’ 
‘GEN. SARMULLUS” (a new name!) he specifies (p. 271) the red mullet, 
Mullus barbatus, and, after a break of many pages, immediately after 
the mackerel (p. 304), he names the surmullet, M/ullus surmuletus. 
As to the former, he avers (p. 271) that ‘‘red mullet have appeared 
within the last few years in the neighborhood of Boston, but not being 
at all prized a few only have been exhibited in the market.” ‘The sur- 
mullet was declared (p. 804) to be ‘Sa variety of the mackerel,” and this 
remark was followed by comments on its place in Roman estimation, 
on what was evidently the chub mackerel, and on fishing for mackerel! 
There is a peculiar genus of gadoidean fishes named PRaniceps, rep- 
resented by a single species of northern Europe, and the type of a dis- 
tinct family, Ranicipitide. To this ‘‘ Gmn. Rantcers ” Smith referred 
two species; one named (p. 209) ‘* Blenny, Blennius Viviparus | Rani- 
ceps Trifurcatus, Cuv.],” the other (p. 211) ‘‘ Raniceps Blennoides.” The 
former was evidently the Zoarces anguillaris and consequently belongs 
to a widely different species from the ‘* viviparus,” a different family 
from Slennius, and a different family also from Raniceps trifur- 
catus. The latter name, we learn from Storer, represented a speci- 
men ‘*‘ purchased of” Smith, by the Boston Society of Natural History, 
of a Cryptacanthodes maculatus ** with the cuticle abraded; ” conse- 
quently the species belongs to a very distinct family from the genus 
Laniceps, as well as from the first species. 
Another striking manifestation of ignorance and rashness is dis- 
played in Smith’s treatment of two other species. Under the ‘‘ Gren. 
Conitis” (p. 183) he notices the ‘‘sucker, Cyprinus Teres | Catastomus|.” 
In the third paragraph under the specific caption he refers to ‘‘a strange 
fish” given by the keeper of the Boston light-house, unknown ‘‘ to any 
of the fishermen in his service, which has a mouth precisely like the 
fish above described; but the body, instead of being round, is quite 
thin [!] and wide, back of the gills. The color is silvery, mottled with 
dark waving lines. It is in length about 10 inches, and appropriately 
denominated the sca-sucker.” What could this ‘‘sea-sucker” have 
been? One familiar with the fishes of the coast and with Smith’s 
idiosynerasy might reconcile the notice with the king-fish (d/enticcrrus 
nebulosus), but the sucker is a malacopterygian and the king-fish an 
acanthopterygian, and besides, the latter has a mouth not at all like that 
of a sucker inreality! AJl this is quite true, but on an examination of 
the very specimen mentioned by Smith, it-was found by Storer to be a 
king-fish. 
How Smith was led to put the sucker in the genus Cobctis and to 
separate it from its near relation, the chub sucker, /vimyzon sucetta, 
which was placed in the genus Cyprinus as the ‘‘ehub, Cyprinus oblon- 
gus,” is not at all comprehensible. 
