4i4 



Memoirs of the Indian Museum. 



[Voi,. V, 



In his revision of the fishes of the genus Elops (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., (8), III, p. 37) 

 Tate Regan has divided all the species into two main groups :■ — -one, which may be 

 designated the ( saur us group/ consists of five species. All have ( ' included " lower 

 jaws and the whole of the praemaxillary band of teeth exposed when the mouth is 

 closed. The other group, which may be termed the "machnata group," consists of 

 two species in both of which the lower jaw is projecting and covers the anterior part 

 of the praemaxillary band of teeth when the mouth is closed. 



Tate Regan when reviewing the genus had only one specimen from India 

 before him. It was said to have come from Madras. This specimen he referred to 

 Elops machnata (Forskâl). Some have been led to suppose, therefore, that all the 

 Indian Elops belong to this species, which in reality is a species of the Red Sea ( see 

 Jordon and Richardson on the Fishes of Formosa in Mem. Carnagie Mus., IV, p. 165). 



There is a very valuable specimen in spirit (Registered No. 2641) in the collection 

 of the Indian Museum, purchased from Day ; it was the original of figure no. 1 of plate 



2. 



1. 



Fig. 1. — Elops indiens, Swainson. 



Side view of the head, with the mouth closed and the lower jaw included 



Fig. 2. — Elops indicus, Swainson. 



Anterior part of the head seen from the front, slightly below the horizontal line, with the mouth closed ; 

 lower jaw is seen included and the anterior part of the intermaxillary teeth exposed. 



clxvi in his Fishes of India. This specimen was caught by Mr. H. S. Thomas in a 

 brackish- water enclosure at South Canara, and Mr. Thomas alluded to it in his Rod in 

 India (Second Edition, p. 214). In this fish as well as in another specimen of Elops , 

 also preserved in spirit, that was bought in the Calcutta market by the Curator of the 

 Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the early sixties, the lower jaw is included 

 inside the upper, so that the whole of the praemaxillary band of teeth is exposed in 

 both the specimens when the mouth is closed. Neither of these specimens, therefore, 

 can belong to E. machnata (Forskâl), which I have reason to suspect is not an Indian 

 species at all. Professor Weber and Dr. Beaufort in their Fishes of the Indo- Australian 

 Archipelago (Vol. II, p. 4) in describing this species {i.e., E. machnata) remarked fc not 

 seen by us." Their note a few lines below to the effect that Bean and Weed confirmed 

 the occurrence of E. machnata in the Indian Archipelago is not corroborated in the 

 original paper by the latter authors. In this paper, which is on the Fishes of Java 

 (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., liXII, p. 589) , Bean and Weed stated that they had examined 



