LABICHTHYS BOWERSII. 323 



" Off Guaymas, 50 miles south." " Surface to 700 fathoms." 



Labichthys Bowersii sp. n. 

 Plate LXIV. fig. 1. 



Br. r. 9 ; D. 252 ; A. 234 ; P. 15 ; C. 6. 



Very long and narrow ; head nearly one eighth of the total, moderately 

 broad and flattened on the crown, rising rather gradually from the snout 

 to the top, and not so abruptly as in Nemichthys fronto, in length equalling 

 one and one fourth times the distance from the gill opening to the vent. 

 Snout greatly elongate, slender, from the tip to the eye equal to two and 

 one half times the length of tlie balance of the head from the front edge of 

 the orbit to the gill opening, jaws curving from one another near the end, 

 lower jaw shorter. Nostrils close together, near the eye ; anterior near 

 the jaw with a short tube ; posterior nearer the upper part of the eye. 

 Mouth wide, cleft little backward of the eye. Teeth veiy small, in pave- 

 ments or broad bands on jaws and vomer, very sharp, hooking backward, 

 vomerine band ending below the forward part of the eye. Apparently 

 there are but nine branchiostegal raj^s, though the condition of the specimen 

 is such as to raise question whether the series is entire. -Eye small, one 

 twelfth as long as the snout, one eighteenth as long as the head, prominent. 

 Gill openings as wide as the eye, extending over the lower two thirds of 

 the bases of the pectorals, separated on the breast by a space of less than 

 half the width of an opening. 



Lateral canal with a single series of rather large pores opening directly 

 outward. 



Dorsal fin about two diameters of the eye farther backward than the 

 bases of the pectorals, much lower than the anal, represented on the 

 specimens at hand by a series of short spines from which the extremities 

 have been carried away. First ray of the anal below the twenty-fourth ra\' 



