24 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



little larger on the preoperculum and suboperculum; there are also very small ones between 

 the rays of the anal and caudal fins. Lateral line undulated, oblique. 



Colour general brownish-olivaceous, deep and fuliginous on the back, lighter on the sides, 

 the middle of the scales brown, the margins black; anal fin greenish, the posterior part of the 

 dorsal and caudal violaceous, abdomen and throat bluish and violaceous, thirteen, fourteen, or 

 fifteen transverse brown bands on the side, a little deeper than the general tint ; the o-percula 

 are also traversed with many olivaceous bands. When the fish dies the colour changes, and 

 is then sometimes all blue or black, and the bands disappear. 



Length eighteen or twenty inches. It is one of the best fishes in Lake Erie, and is salted. 

 It is taken at all seasons of the year by the seine or hook and line. 



Cichla minima. (Le Sueur.) 



Form. — Body very long, sub -compressed, elevated before the dorsal. Head arched, very 

 large. Eye very large. Teeth very small in many ranges on the jaws and palate. Mouth 

 large. 



Scales very small. Lateral line straight in the middle of the body. Colour deep grey, 

 tinted with bluish on the back, with metallic reflexions on the sides and abdomen, and with 

 points, or small black and brown spots on the abdomen and back, and a spot on the neck. 



Fins.— Br. ?; D. 9/14; P. ? ; V. ? 4 3/10; C. 17 to 18. 



Dorsal fin long, divided into two equal parts, the anterior of spinous rays much lower than 

 the soft part, which is rounded. Anal large, equal to the posterior part of the dorsal. 

 Pectorals large, placed very low near the operculum. Ventrals much smaller than the pec- 

 torals, and placed exactly beneath them. Caudal subtruncated. 



Length nine lines. Lives in the small lagoons of tranquil water which discharge by narrow 

 channels into Lake Erie. 



[8.] 1. Pomotis vulgaris. Northern Pomotis. 



Family, Percoideae. Genus, Pomotis. Val. Hist, des Poiss., vii. p. 454. 



Plate lxxvi. 



This fish frequents the sheltered inlets of Lake Huron and the ponds in that 

 vicinity, concealing itself, in the summer time, beneath the broad leaves of the 

 nuphar and water-lily*, where it may be readily taken with a hook baited with a small 

 fish or worm. I found fragments of fresh-water shells (helix, planorbis, limneus, 

 &c.) in the stomachs of several individuals which I examined. In the third volume 

 of the Histoire des Poissons, Baron Cuvier referred a number of specimens which 



* Catesby says of the species he detected in Carolina, the original c the Labrus auritus, Linn,, that it covers itself with 

 mud or sand, and is therefore called " groun'd-perch." 



