Putnam.] oOO [April 1 



The following paper was read : — 

 Remarks on the Family Nemophld,e. By F. W. Putnam 



„. 



In 1803, Russell, in his " Fishes of Cororaandel," figured a fish on 

 plate 39, 1 which Swainson in 1839 names Xiphasia setifer, but does 

 not give any description, evidently knowing the fish only from the 

 figure by Russell, though he referred it to his subfamily Ophidonidae 

 in which he also placed the genera Cepola and Nemotherus. 



Dr. Kaup, in 1858, communicated a paper to the Zoological Soci- 

 ety of London, in which he describes (accompanied by a figure) 

 under the name of Nemopliis Lessoni, two specimens of a fish in the 

 Paris Museum. The locality whence these specimens, which were 

 " nine Paris inches in length," were obtained was not known. Dr. 

 Kaup states that the specimen he examined was in " poor condi- 

 tion," which will account for the supposed absence of the ventral fins, 

 but he calls particular attention to the peculiar character of the large 

 canine teeth, and states that the fish is so unlike the other " ribbon- 

 shaped fishes," with which he confounds it, as to form a distinct 

 family, for which he proposes the name of Namophidce. 



Dr. Gunther, in his third volume of the Catalogue of Fishes in the 

 British Museum, published in 1861, places Kaup's genus Nemophis, 

 which he knew only from Kaup's figure and description, in the family 

 Blenniidas, though he states that " the position of this singular fish 

 cannot be exactly determined." 



In the next volume of his Catalogue, published in 1862, Dr. Gun- 

 ther characterizes a genus under the name of Xiphogadus, based on 

 the figure given on plate 39 of Russell, and places the genus in the 

 group of Brotulina in the family Ophidiirias. For this fish he adopts 

 the specific name of setifer, and quotes Swainson's generic name of 

 Xiphasia with an exclamation mark, probably intending thereby to 

 indicate that the name is not admissible on account of its construction. 



In 1864, Dr. Bleeker described under the name of Xiphasia trachy- 

 pareia, a fish which Dr. Gunther, in the Zoological Record for the 

 same year, and under the heading of Blenniidaa, genus Xiphogadus, 

 remarks on as follows : — " Dr. Bleeker has had the good fortune to 



1 There is not a copy of Russell's work in any library in Boston, Cambridge or 

 Salem, and as I have never seen the plate referred to, I know it only from the de- 

 scription given by Gunther, who also states that the single specimen observed by 

 Russell was fourteen iuches in length, and was from Vizagapatam. 



