320 MR. R. COLLETT ON CERTAIN GOBIOID FISHES. [Mar. 5, 



is rather incomplete) bas afterwards, without any further addition, been 

 repeated in the various editions of Yarrell's History of Brit. Fishes. 

 In May, 1844, Von Duben and Koren in Ofv. Kgl. Vet. Akad. Forh. 

 for the same year introduced two other species of the same group, 

 both of which had been previously found, in Dec. 1834, in the district 

 of Bergen, Norway, by the late naturalist, Mr. P. Stuwitz, after whom 

 one of them was named Gobius stuwitzii. The last-named species 

 had certainly, as } ointed out by the authors, a decided similarity to 

 the Scottish G. albus. Still the difference in the construction of the 

 body, as well as of the teeth, was so obvious that they could not 

 easily be mistaken. Instead of being plump, like L. albus, with the 

 head thick, the cleft of the mouth wide, the teeth long, the interorbital 

 space wide, the second dorsal and the anal fins even, G. stuwitzii 

 was slender, with the head thin, and the cleft of the mouth short, 

 the teeth extremely feeble, the interorbital space narrow, and the 

 second dorsal and the anal fins diminishing behind. In 1861, Dr. 

 Malm, in Bohuslan, Sweden, found both the named species in fully 

 developed state, one of them (G. stuwitzii) with ripe spawn; and 

 he therefore gave, in July 1863, in the Forh. Skand. Naturf. 9. Mote, 

 comparative diagnoses of them, chiefly based upon the structure of 

 the teeth and the vertical fins. 



When Dr. Giinther, in 1861, issued the volume of his Catalogue 

 of the Fishes of Brit. Museum, in which he treats of the Gobioids, 

 G. albus was made the type of the new genus Latrunculus 1 ; but, 

 from the description of G. stuwitzii, he did not venture to include 

 this under the same genus ; for want of a better place he inserted it 

 under the genus Gobiosoma, Gir., as it was still undecided that it 

 possessed scales, which, for the first time, was proved by Dr. Malm 

 in 1863. Prof. Gill, in the Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadel- 

 phia for 1863, even made it a type for a new genus Boreogobius, 

 without giving even a single word of reason for this alteration ; and 

 Dr. Bleeker, in 1874, followed in his steps in the Synopsis of 

 the Gobiidse, which he communicated in the 9th volume of Arch. 

 Neerl. Sci. Exact, et Nat. 



Since the autumn of 1871, 1 have found the form L. stuwitzii in the 

 Christiania fjord in great numbers, and have collected innumerable 

 specimens during the autumn months. All these specimens have 

 fully agreed with the original description given by Diiben and Koren, 

 and consequently are constantly different from that of Parnell's L. 

 albus. Having provided myself during the first autumn with what 

 I thought sufficient materials, consisting of several thousand speci- 

 mens, I gave, in the Forh. Vid. Selsk. Christiania, 1872, a short de- 

 scription of the species, comparing it with the descriptions at hand 

 of L. albus, in which I endeavoured as much as possible to keep the 

 two species separate. During the succeeding years I tried amongst 

 the great quantities of L. stuwitzii to find L. albus, but without 



1 The name Latrunculus was employed by Dr. Gray as early as in 1847, for 

 a Gasteropod (Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1847, p. 139). But, as I was informed 

 by my friend the late Dr. Morcb, of Copenhagen, this name is quite superfluous, 

 and will hardly eTer be reemployed for that mollusk. 



