236 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



[85.] 1. Ami A ocellicauda. (Richardson.) Marsh-fish. 



Poisson de marais. Canadians. 



f The genus Amia stands next in the Regne Animal to Erythrinus, which it is 

 said to resemble in the jaws and teeth, the hard osseous plates that cover the head, 

 the large scales, and flat gill-rays *, which are, however, twelve in number. 

 Between the limbs of the lower jaw there is a kind of osseous shield, which exists 

 also, though but in a rudimentary form, in megalops and elops. Behind the conical 

 teeth there are others like small paving stones, and the dorsal, which commences 

 between the pectorals and ventrals, extends nearly to the caudal : the anal, on the 

 contrary, is short. The nostrils have each a little tubular appendage. The 

 stomach is capacious and fleshy, the gut wide and strong, without caeca, and, what 

 is remarkable, the air-bladder is cellular like the lung of a reptile. Only one 

 species, the amia calva, has been hitherto described ; it feeds upon craw-fish, and 

 inhabits the rivers of Carolina, probably not ranging far north, as it does not 

 occur in the published lists of the New York or Massachusetts fish. 



Mr. Todd sent me a notice of a Lake Huron fish, named locally Poisson de 

 marais. It is speared by the Indians in the rushy shallows which it frequents, but 

 is seldom eaten by the settlers. A specimen which Mr. Todd prepared, being 

 unfortunately destroyed by vermin, never reached me, but his short description 

 corresponds with the characters of the genus Amia, though the gill-rays are fewer 

 than in the Carolina species. 



" Poisson de marais — Order, Abdomina les." — " Back and sides dark, belly and fins dark 

 green. Head short, flattened at top and on the sides ; eyes small ; jaws even ; mouth capa- 

 cious ; tongue obtuse. Two short cirrhi on the upper lip, the lower lip notched. One row of 

 sharp longer teeth on the margin of the jaws, more interiorly shorter clustered ones ; two 

 patches of teeth on the upper part of the gullet. Pectorals near the throat. Ventrals about 

 the middle of the fish. One anal. One dorsal extending from four inches behind the neck 

 to the tail, which is oblong and round, with an irregular round spot of the size of a shilling, 

 bordered with scarlet at the base of the seven upper caudal rays. Scales large, semicircular, 

 and membranaceous exteriorly ; square where inserted into the skin. The intestines make 

 three longitudinal turns in the abdomen. Rays.— Br. 8 ; P. 17; F.7;A.9; DAS; C. 22." 

 Todd, in lit. 



* " The Erythrini, like the rest of the Clupeoidece, have small intermaxillaries, the greater part of the sides of the upper 

 jaw being formed by the labials; a row of conical teeth occupies the margin of the jaws, and anteriorly there are some 

 large ones mixed with the others. Each palate-bone is furnished with two plates of teeth like velvet-pile ; and there are 

 five broad gill-rays." — Regne Animal, , 



