638 



ME. G. A. BOULENGER ON A COLLECTION 



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acquainted with similar habits in Enantiopus 

 longianalis and Tropheus moorii. I find in 

 Dr. Cunnington's notes an interesting entry 

 referring to this matter: "The natives say it is 

 always the female, in the cases where one of the 

 parents takes the eggs in the mouth." This is 

 not only confirmed by the specimens in the col- 

 lection, whenever I have been able to ascertain 

 the sex, but agrees entirely with a statement 

 made by me four years ago ^ to the effect 

 that so far as I could speak from personal 

 observation, having tested the sex of a great 

 number of specimens of Tilapia nilotica and 

 strigigena from the Nile, it is invariably the 

 female who thus carries the eggs. This was 

 in contradiction to statements made by Lortet 

 and by Giinther, who ascribed this habit to 

 the male in the species of the same genus 

 with which they had dealt. I have, how- 

 ever, since had occasion to examine the 

 specimen of Chromis {Tilapia) philander sent 

 by Mr. Nendick Abraham to Dr. Giinther ^, 

 and was able to satisfy myself from autopsy 

 that it is a female and not a male ; whilst 

 Dr. Pellegrin has ascertained the female sex 

 of a specimen with eggs in the mouth pre- 

 sented to the Paris Museum by Dr. Lortet as 

 his Chromis paterfamilias {=l Tilapia simonis). 

 Further observations by Dr. Pellegrin ^ on 

 Tilapia galilcea and Pelmatochromis lateralis, 

 by Mr. Schoeller on Paratilapia multicolor, 

 and by myself on Tilapia natalensis have led 

 to the same result. It therefore remains 

 unproved whether in any of the African or 

 Syrian Cichlids the buccal "incubation," as 

 it has been called by Dr. Pellegrin, devolves 

 on the male ; the instances previously adduced 



1 ' The Field,' c. 1902, p. 33. 



2 Ann. & Mag. N. H. 1901, viii. p. 321. 

 ^ Mem. Soc. Zool. Prance, xvi. 1904. 



