Hectob.— Notes on New Zealand Ichthyology. 247 



24a. CARANX KOHERU. sp. nov. 



Plate XL 



Native name— Koheru. The Herring Scad. 



D.7|I A. 2il. 



Length of body is four and two third times the height and three and a 

 half times the length of the head ; teeth very minute in a single series on 

 both jaws, also present on the vomer and palatine bones ; cheeks smooth and 

 bright silvery ; breast scaly ; lower jaw longest, maxillaries free, dependent 

 and expanded j snout longer than the diameter of the eye ; pectoral is over 

 the central fin, and extends back to the vent, which is at one-half the total 

 length, including the caudal ; scales very small, being one-fifth the diameter of 

 the eye ; the lateral line is curved till under the twelfth soft ray of the dorsal, 

 and then becomes straight, and is armed with fifty-eight keeled plates, the 

 anterior curved portion having seventy-two serrated scales. 



Colour, steel blue above, silvery beneath, with a black spot on the edge of 

 the oj>ercular notch. 



Total length, 5-5 inches. The natives told me that the full adult size of 

 this fish is 9 inches, and that it is found at all seasons along the coast between 

 "Wangarei and Cape Brett. I obtained my specimens among a shoal of 

 immature hauturi (Trachurus trachurus) in Tutukaka Harbour, near 

 Nsunjmru. 



o""o 



316. Ditrema violacea, Hutton. 



Is a common fish near the East Cape and at the Bay of Islands for a few 

 weeks in autumn, and is very much esteemed as food by the natives, who call 

 it maomao. 



31c. PLATYSTBTHUS ABBRBVIATUS. sp. nov. 



PI. XL 



1/6 j D. 7/26 



14/3 



Body compressed ; general form rhomboidal, the greatest height being 

 vertical to the second dorsal spine, which is over the anal spine ; length 

 equal to one and two-third times the height, the head being two-thirds of the 

 height ; length of snout less than diameter of the orbit, which is half the 

 length of the head ; interorbital space equal to the snout, this bein^ the 

 greatest thickness of the body ; the eyes are very high up, and over each 

 orbit is a double serrated ridge that ends in a spine that projects forwards and 

 covers the nostril ; the inner branch of the ridge is continued backwards 

 bounding a deep interorbital depression, the outer being continued round the 

 margin of the orbit ; the lower jaw slightly projects ; the upper jaw is 

 formed of the intermaxillaries. the maxillarips flpnpnrli'nrr ^,4;^!^ — _xr- 



