36 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



COTTOI DEJE.— MAILED- CHEEKS*. 



This family, having many characters in common with the Percoideae, is dis- 

 tinguished by the sub-orbitars being united to the preoperculum, and so expanded 

 as to cover a large part or the whole of the cheeks. A family likeness prevails 

 among the fish possessing this cheek-mail, notwithstanding the various forms of 

 the head, that result from its greater or less development. In one group of genera, 

 the head has the form of a cube or parallelopiped ; in another it is round or 

 depressed ; in a third it is compressed ; and a fourth group is composed of fish of 

 a hideous aspect, having a large or even monstrous head and vertical eyes. Gas- 

 terosteus, though belonging to this family, because it has the cheeks protected by 

 the sub-orbitars, does not enter any of these four groups, there being neither spines 

 nor tubercles on its head, nor anything very striking in its form : in this genus 

 the first dorsal is replaced by free or detached spines. Monocentvis, which has a 

 large cuirassed head, and the whole body protected by scales of stony hardness, 

 forms a genus apart, whose affinities, owing to our ignorance of its anatomy, are 

 unknown : it resembles the gasterostei in its free dorsal spines. The percoid genus 

 Uranoscopus approaches this family in the development of the sub-orbitars, but 

 they are united to the temporal bone posteriorly, and not to the preoperculum. 



The only forms among the Cottoidece that have anything like a general distri- 

 bution are the larger genera of Trigla, Cottus, Aspidophorus, Scorpcena, Sebastes, 

 and Gasterosteus, containing the majority of the whole species. Minous, Pterois, 

 Apistes, and Synanceia, belong to the Indian Ocean, a single species of each of the 

 three latter extending to the Pacific. Platycephalus and Pelor are also genera of 

 those seas, a greater proportion of their species, however, extending to the more 

 temperate latitudes of the Pacific, three of the former existing on the extra-tropical 

 coasts of New Holland, and four with one Pelor in the sea of Japan. The Japanese 

 Sea also nourishes some forms peculiar to itself, as Opliclithys, Bembras, and 

 Monocentris, and the sea of Kamtschatka alone produces Blepsias and Hemilepi- 

 dotus. Peristedion is peculiar to the Mediterranean. The European Atlantic 

 possesses no cottoid form exclusively ; but on the American side, Hemitripterus 



* Joues cuirassees, (Reg. An.) Cuvier has not furnished us with a Latin equivalent to this phrase, which might be 

 translated Pareioylonidce or Pareiophtece, (from na^ua, genu, et otAov, scutum, or (wAjtoj, armatus,) but to avoid introducing 

 a new term, I have used Cottoidece, which will be readily understood, being derived from the most familiar genus of the 

 family. 



