119 
Ramsay, E. P., Contributions to Australian Oology. P. 2. in: Proc. Linn. 
Soc. N. S. Wales, Vol. 7. P. 4. p. 406—415. 
Notes on [20] Birds from the Solomon Islands. in: Proc. Linn. Soc. 
N.S. Wales, Vol. 7. P. 4. p. 665—673. 
II. Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen. 
1. Note on Eurypharynx and an allied new genus. 
By Theodore Gill and John A. Ryder, Washington. 
eingeg. 1. Dec. 1883. 
In the » Comptes Rendus« of the French Academy of Sciences, for 
December 1882 (p. 1226) Mr. Léon Vaillant has introduced a re- 
markable deep-sea fish under the name Hurypharynx pelecanoides. 
Five specimens of a species evidently closely allied to, and perhaps 
identical with, the Eurypharynx were obtained by the U.S. Fish Com- 
mission Steamer »Albatross« in August and September, 1883. We have 
made a preliminary investigation of these fishes and briefly present 
the results herewith. 
The characters observed in the specimens collected by the Alba- 
tross may be segregated into several categories — 1) those disagreeing 
with structural characters exhibited by all normal Teleosts and which 
are paramount even to the characters usually considered to be of ordi- 
nal value; 2) those presumably common to the western and eastern 
Atlantic forms and which may be regarded as of family value; and 
3), the characters alleged to be peculiar to Eurypharynx on one hand 
and on the other those which contrast with such in the American form. 
In this order we here expose the cardinal characteristics of the Eury- 
pharyngoid fishes in advance of a monograph in which we propose to 
describe and illustrate in detail their morphology, and discuss their 
| relationship to other fishes, and especially to the Saccopharyngids and 
eel-like types generally. In view of the characteristics thus hinted at, 
we are constrained to differentiate the new form and Eurypharynz as 
an ordinal as well as family type, as had some time before been fore- 
seen to be necessary by Prof. Gill (See »Science«, Vol. 1, p. 231, 
March 30). 
Order Lyomeri. 
Teleost fishes with five branchial arches (none modified as bran- 
chiostegal or pharyngeal) far behind the skull; an imperfectly ossified 
cranium articulating with the first vertebra by a basioccipital condyle 
alone; only two cephalic arches, both movable, 1) an anterior dentiger- 
