72 ZOOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE. 



Cuvier and Valenciennes ; but as the notice of it in the " Histoire des Poissons" 

 is extremely brief, I have deemed it advisable to annex a detailed description. 

 Both Mr. Darwin's specimens are from King George's Sound, where the species 

 was first discovered by MM. Quoy and Gaimard. 



Seriola bipinnulata. Quoy et Gaim. 



Seriola bipinnulata, Quoy et Gaim. Voyage del'Uranie (Zool.) p. 363, p], ft, f. 3. 

 — Cuv. Regne An. (2d Edit.) torn. ii. p. 206. 



Form.— Elongated, and fusiform. Greatest depth contained four times and a half in the length, 

 measuring this last to the base of the caudal fork. Head four times and a quarter in the same : 

 depth of the head not quite once and three-quarters in its own length ; the cheeks nearly verti- 

 cal. Snout pointed : profile straight, and but slightly falling. Lower jaw a little longer than 

 the upper, the commissure reaching to beneath the orifices of the nostrils : maxillary very con- 

 spicuous, and greatly dilated at its posterior extremity. A band of minute velutine teeth in each 

 jaw, broadest in front; a disk of similar teeth on the vomer, and a band on each palatine. Eyes 

 large; their diameter one-fifth the length of the head; situated a little above the middle of the 

 cheek, and a little nearer the end of the snout than the posterior margin of the opercle; exactly 

 two diameters between the eye and the end of the lower jaw. The nostrils consist of two small, 

 round, closely approximating orifices, the anterior one partially covered by a membrane ; situated 

 rather nearer the eye than the extremity of the snout. Preopercle with the ascending margin 

 vertical, and the angle at bottom rounded ; the limb very broad, and marked with veins, and 

 between the veins, along the basal margin, with fine strite. The rest of the pieces of the gill- 

 cover, taken together, present a rounded and regularly curved outline posteriorly ; the line of 

 separation between the opercle and subopercle ascends obliquely backwards from a point about 

 two-thirds down the posterior margin of the preopercle ; that between the subopercle and the 

 interopercle (which last is well developed) passes downwards and backwards, forming an angle 

 of about 45° with the axis of the body. Branchial aperture large ; the membrane deeply cleft. 

 Snout, jaws, and pieces of the opercle, smooth and naked ; cheeks scaly, the scales on the 

 upper part of the cheek, between the eye and the upper angle of the preopercle, being of a nar- 

 row pointed form. The scales on the body are of a moderate size, oval, marked with fine con- 

 centric circular striae, with a fan of coarser diverging striae on their concealed portion. The lateral 

 line is smooth throughout its length, and runs nearly straight from the upper angle of the opercle 

 to the caudal, its course being a little above the middle. 



The first dorsal commences at about one- third of the entire length, measuring this last as 

 before : it is low and inconspicuous, consisting of only six weak spines, of which the third and 

 fourth are somewhat the longest, but whose length is less than one-fifth of the depth of the 

 body. The length of the fin itself is rather less than half the depth. Second dorsal closely 

 following, and much longer; of the form usual in this family, with the anterior portion elevated 

 and somewhat triangular, but beyond the ninth ray low and even : its spine half the length of 

 the first soft ray : its greatest elevation contained about two and a-half times in the depth. The 

 last two rays of this fin are broke away from the rest, with an intervening space, to form a spu- 

 rious finlet, and are rather longer, the last especially, than those which precede. The anal com- 



