ADDENDA. 297 



Page 46. 

 [15.] 5. Cottus Grgenlandicus. (Cuvier.) Greenland Bull-head. 



I am obliged to Mr. Audubon for three specimens of a cottus taken at New- 

 foundland, which are almost without a doubt examples of the species described by 

 Fabricius under the appellation of scorpius, called Grcenlandicus by Cuvier, and 

 known to the Greenlanders by the names of kaneeok and kaneoonak. They have 

 the four tubercles bounding a square area on the top of the head, and the sixteen 

 spines enumerated by Fabricius ; viz., a nasal, opercular, subopercular, scapular, 

 and humeral one, with three preopercular ones on each side ; the colours of the 

 body also, and rays of the fins, agree sufficiently well with the description in the 

 Fauna Grcenlandica. As Captain J. C. Ross informs us that the cottus quadri- 

 cornis of the appendices to Sir Edward Parry's first and third voyages, and of Sir 

 John Ross's recent one, is named kan-ny-yoke by the Esquimaux of Boothia, it is 

 rendered probable that it also ought to be referred to Graenlandicus. The scor- 

 pioides of Fabricius, quoted by the authors of these appendices as synonymous with 

 their quadricornis *', is named pokudlek and eegarsok by the natives, and differs 

 from the true quadricornis of Linnaeus and Bloch by many characters ; it wants 

 the nasal, scapular, and humeral spines which exist in Grcenlandicus. Dr. Mit- 

 chill gives so slight a notice of his cottus scorpius (the cottus Mitchilli of Cuvier), 

 that it is impossible to come to any certain conclusion respecting it, but the little 

 that he does say of its colours, and the comparative length of its spines, applies 

 also to Grcenlandicus. Cottus octodecim-spinosus may be readily distinguished 

 from Grcenlandicus by the length of its preopercular spine, which in the latter falls 

 more than its own length (or nearly three-quarters of an inch in our largest speci- 

 men) short of the tip of the opercular, spine. The two species differ likewise 

 remarkably in the size of the pyloric cseca, and in other respects. Their tints of 

 colour are, however, at times much alike, for the markings in Mr. Audubon's 

 specimens are very similar to those exhibited by specimens of octodecim-spinosus, 

 brought from Newfoundland by M. Pilaye. {Hist, des Poiss., viii., p. 459.) 



Cuvier remarks that the account of the kaneeok and other Greenland species 

 given by Fabricius, forms the ground-work of almost all that has been said by 



* In page 45 I hazarded a conjecture that this fish might be identical with my hexacornis, under the supposition that 

 the two anterior horns might have been overlooked, but the acquisition of the Newfoundland specimens having dispelled 

 the obscurity which hung over the scorpius of Fabricius, has rendered a reference of the quadricornis of the recent Arctic 

 Voyages to the Grcenlandicus more likely to be correct. 



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