42 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
bone is broad. Further the family is characterized by the villiform 
jaw and palatal teeth, pavement-like dentition of the hinder part of 
the mouth and wide parasphenoid bone. 
is 
The Albulids, like the Elopids, are an ancient family and repre- 
sentatives have existed from Cretaceous times to the present, al- 
though the affinities of the extinct forms have not been precisely 
determined. Remains of a fish that lived in the Lower and Middle 
Eocene and that was formerly called Pisodus owenw have been re- 
ferred even to the genus Albula. In the present seas there is only 
one genus, Albula, represented by a single species, Albula vulpes. 
It is found in almost every tropical sea, but it is not confined te 
such for individuals not a few extend their wanderings quite far 
beyond the tropical zone, occasionally even roaming northward to 
Massachusetts. 
It attains a length of from a foot and a half to three feet and a 
weight of about three to ten pounds, but the average is far below 
the maximum mentioned. 
Tf 
Notwithstanding its wide geographical distribution, it is in truth 
a shore fish and seeks its food close to the shore or on muddy or 
sandy flats where shellfish—especially small bivalve shellfish—most 
abound. When the flood tide begins and “up to full-tide” is the 
select time for feeding, and “ flats in water varying from a depth 
of eight to ten inches,” a choice place for hunting for food. As the 
fishes feed in such shallow water, their heads go down and their 
tails come cut of the water, and as they work in shorewards their 
dorsal fins cut the water, and the sunlight is reflected from their 
silvery sides.’ The actions of the fish thus seen have suggested to 
some the name “ grubber.”’ 
There is a beautiful correlation between the fish’s food and the 
structural means for assimilating it. The dentition as a whole is 
quite peculiar—unlike that of any other animal. The bony roof of 
the mouth is closed in by the juxtaposition of the parasphenoid and 
pterygoid bones and covered with roundish molar teeth and the 
floor of the mouth has opposed teeth so that the fish is well pro- 
vided with the means for crushing the shells which it takes; ex- 
ternally is provision for finding and rooting them up in the pro- 
jecting conic snout, which is so prominent as to have suggested 
one of its early names—Conorhynchus or cone-snout. 
