1870.] Notes on the Genus Hara. 39 



These little fishes in their external appearance are so generally 

 similar to the Bagarius y that the native fishermen of Orissa persist- 

 ed that they were merely their young. They frequent the same 

 localities, namely rivers which are swollen to floods during the 

 rainy season. They get beneath vegetation and under stones, and 

 are generally found mixed with the shells, slime, and refuse which 

 is drawn by nets to the shore, but being small and valueless as food, 

 are frequently overlooked. 



Hara Jerdoni, sp. nov. PI. IY, figure 2 a. I. c. 



D4P.£? V.6. A.10 C.12. 



Length of head £, of caudal £ of the total length. 



Height of body £ of the total length. 



Eyes, three diameters from the end of the snout. 



Head depressed, half wider opposite the opercles than high, and 

 slightly wider than long. Its upper surface rugose, and its supe- 

 rior longitudinal furrow extending nearly to the base of the occi- 

 pital process, where it terminates in a small pit. Snout rounded, 

 mouth small, transverse, with the upper jaw slightly the longest. 

 The nasal bones terminate in a small spine on either side above 

 the centre of the mouth. Maxillary cirri reach the gill opening, 

 all the others are shorter. Occipital process 1^ times as long as 

 wide at its base. Shoulder bone moderately triangular, rugose, 

 and with two prominent ossicles posterior to, but in a line with it ; 

 between it and the occipital process and parallel with them is an 

 intermediate bony prolongation reaching to opposite the basal bone 

 of the dorsal fin. 



Fins.— The dorsal spine equals the length from the posterior 

 margin of the orbit to the end of the snout, it is serrated posterior- 

 ly. The length of the base of the adipose fin is a little more than 

 half that of the dorsal fin. Pectoral spine flattened and slightly 

 longer than the distance between the snout and the base of the 

 dorsal fin, when laid backwards it reaches nearly as far as the end 

 of ventrals ; it is strongly denticulated internally with 12 curved 

 teeth, whilst externally it has 26 smaller ones directed backwards ; 

 ventrals inserted posterior to the base of the dorsal, caudal forked, 

 none of its rays elongated. 



Skin smooth. 



