382 MITCHILL ON THE FISHES OF NEW-YORK. 



Yellow scorpcena. (Scorpcenajlava.) With ten pairs of cirrihi on 

 the upper lip, head and gill covers ; with about an equal number of 

 bony protuberances about the head and eyes ; with six pairs of cirrhi 

 beneath the lower jaw ; and a tubercular (not a cirrhose) lateral line. 



The length of the specimen now before me is fourteen inches ; the 

 breadth three and a quarter ; and the depth two and a half. He 

 resembles the bullheads by his large mouth, and knobby huge head. 

 He has a distant affinity to the gurnards by his large and rounded pec- 

 toral fins ; and the whiskers, at the extremities of the upper lip, have 

 a remote similitude to the catfish's. He was taken at sea, with the cod 

 fishes. 



His colour, from head to tail, is of a fine lemon yellow, with trifling 

 variegations of brown or blackish, on the sides and fins. 



The head is rough and tubercular, but not spinous. About twenty 

 knobs can be counted. Cirrhi grow out of the skin, near the upper lip, 

 eyes, and cheeks, to the number of twenty or thereabout. Two, near 

 the corners of the mouth, have the appearance of small mystaces. 



The eyebrows are rough and knobbed. The space between them 

 deeply channelled. The eyes brownish, lateral, and approximated. 



The cirrhi to the lower jaw are twelve in number, and several of 

 them are subdivided into fingered or foliated processes. On the lower 

 lip are three. 



There are abundance of sharp little teeth in the upper lip, in both 

 jaws, and in the upper and lower parts of his wide and capacious throat. 

 The dorsal fin is single, and consists of twenty-nine rays. Of these 

 the first sixteen are stiffer than the others, and ramentose. The break 

 between this section of the dorsal rays, and the posterior one is such, 

 that it almost appears as if there were two dorsal fins. This, however, 



