ARTICLE XIII. 



SYNOPSIS OF THE CYPRINIDiE OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



BY E D W A It I) D. CO V K. 



Bead Oct. 10, 1800. 



Though the fishes of this family arc known to every boy as minnows, shiners, &c, and 

 to the fisherman as his best bait for the capture of the rapacious bass, pike, &c, to the 

 public generally they possess little interest or value. They are nevertheless the most 

 numerous of the vertebrate animal life of our fresh-water streams, both in individuals 

 and species, though to the uneducated eye, the number of the latter would appear far 

 less than is really the case. This is in part occasioned by the general absence of pattern 

 or shade of coloration ; the prevailing silver reflections perhaps serve as efficient means 

 of concealment. 



The Cyprinidse attain a great development in the Paleeotropical and Paleearctic regions, 

 and occur in the ^Ethiopian. They exist in numbers but of a smaller and less vigorous 

 growth in the Regie- Nearctica, but cease with the northern section of the Neotropical, 

 where their place, as well as that of several other families, appears to be supplied by the 

 more generalized, and as respects their reproductive organs, inferior form of Characinidee. 

 In the lowest fauna, the R. Australis, the family is also wanting, while Characinoid types 

 people the fresh waters. 



The family is associated in North America and Eastern Asia* with a nearly allied form, 

 the Catastomidoe,t and in the Old World, with a second family, the Cobitidae,$ which to- 

 gether form the order Euentognathi of Gill. This group was first separated accurately 

 as a family by Agassiz. It is defined as follows : 



Inferior pharyngeal bones prolonged upwards into two falciform tooth-bearing vertical jaws ; brain-cavity of the 

 cranium prolonged between the orbits; maxillary bones well developed. Fourth ventricle of the brain with a 

 median lobus impar behind the cerebellum. 



* Vide Blocker's discovery of a Carpiodcs chinensis in China. 



f Characterized by Gill, Proceed. Academy, 1861, G. 



X Cobitoidac and llomaloptcroidce ; Gill, Proc. Ac. Phila., p. 6. 



