THE FISHES OF NEW JERSEY. 387 



Family ECHENEIDID^. 



The Remoras. 



Body fusiform, elongate. Mouth wide, with villiform teeth in 

 jaws, on vomer, palatines and usually tongue. Premaxillaries 

 not protractile. Lower jaw projecting beyond upper. Opercles 

 unarmed. Gill-membranes not united, free from isthmus. Gills 

 4, a slit behind fourth. Gill-rakers short. Pseudobranchise 

 obsolete. Branchiostegals 7. No air-vessel. Several pyloric ap- 

 pendages. Vertebrae more than 10 + 14. Body covered with 

 minute cycloid scales. Spinous dorsal modified into a sucking- 

 disk placed on top of head and neck, and composed of a double 

 series of transverse movable cartilaginous plates, serrated on 

 their posterior or free edges. Dorsal and anal fins long, without 

 spines, opposite each other. Caudal emarginate or rounded. 

 Pectorals placed high. Ventrals I, 5, thoracic, close together. 

 No' caudal keel and finlets. 



Fishes of moderate size, often found attached to sharks, or 

 other large fishes and floating objects, by means of the dorsal 

 disk, and are thus carried for great distances in the sea. Two 

 species recorded from our coasts. 



Key to the genera. 



a. Body slender; ventrals narrowly adnate to abdomen. ECHeneis 



aa. Body robust; ventrals broadly adnate to abdomen. rEmora 



Genus EchEneis Linnaeus. 



The Shark Suckers. 



Echeneis alba-cauda Mitchill. 



Plate 84. 



Suck Fish. White Tailed Remora. Indian Remora. 



Head 4%; depth 85/5; D. 33; A. 34; laminae in disk 21; 

 mandible 2V10 in head; pectoral i>4; ventral lYs; third anal 

 ray 2; caudal lYs ; snout 2V10 in head, measured from its own 



