Gobioidei, Discocephali, and Teniosomi 463 
mouth, armed with a bristling row of teeth. This would be 
a great mistake, for our little fish has no teeth worth bragging 
about, and does not open his mouth any wider than a well- 
behaved fish should do. The great difference between his 
long jaws and those of a garpike is that the latter’s project 
forward, while those of our goby are prolonged backward 
immensely. 
“The long-jawed goby was discovered by Dr. J. G. Cooper 
in the Bay of San Diego, among seaweed growing on small 
stones at the wharf, and in such position that it must have 
been out of the water from three to six hours daily, though 
kept moist by the seaweed. 
“On a recent occasion a single Gillichthys, much larger than 
any of the original types, was presented by a gentleman who 
said that the fish, which was new to him, was abundant upon 
his ranch in Richardson’s Bay, in the northern part of the 
Bay of San Francisco; that the Chinamen dug them up and 
ate them, and that he had had about eleven specimens cooked, 
— 
Fig. 419.—Long-jawed Goby. Gillichthys mirabilis Cooper. Santa Barbara. 
and found them good, tasting, he thought, something like eels. 
The twelfth specimen he had preserved in alcohol, in the interest 
of natural science. This gentleman had the opportunity of 
observing something of the mode of life of these fishes, and 
informed us that their holes, excavated in the muddy banks of 
tidal creeks, increase in size as they go downward, so that the 
lower portion is below the water-level, or at least sufficiently low 
to be kept wet by the percolation from the surrounding mud. 
‘‘When the various specimens now acquired were placed side 
by side, the difference in the relative length of their jaws was 
very conspicuous, for while in the smallest it was about one- 
fifth of the total length, in the largest it exceeded one-third. 
“As the fish had now been found in two places in the bay, 
