336 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXVI. 
brains is scientific (because the literature of that subject is so), but 
the study of mental processes is popular, or non-scientific, for the 
reason that we have a mass of trivial literature on psychology. 
EDAC 
Notes on Fishes. — In a recent visit to San Diego the writer saw 
in the possession of an animal artist, Miss Annie Andrews, good 
paintings of the threadfin, Polydactylus approximans, and the sea 
bonito, Gymnosarda pelamis. The threadfin is common about Mazat- 
lan, but had never been taken in the limits of the United States. 
It was once described as Polynemus californiensis by Thominot, 
from “California”; but that California which stretches from Rogue 
River to Cape San Lucas is zoólogically very indefinite, comprising 
three distinct marine faunas. The oceanic bonito is common at 
Honolulu and in Japan, and was once before noticed by Eigenmann 
at San Diego. 
In the Scientific American for December 21 Mr. C. F. Holder 
publishes a photograph of Zuvarus imperialis, a large and rare fish 
of the Mediterranean, lately taken at Avalon on Santa Catalina 
Island, off the coast of California. There is no question as to the 
identity of the species with the genus Luvarus, and no specific 
difference appears in Mr. Holder’s photograph, a copy of which the 
writer has seen. 
Mr. Holder also reports that he has seen two specimens of the 
oarfish, Regalecus (russelli ?), taken in Avalon Bay. One of these, two 
feet long, was examined by him while alive. « Its topknot," Mr. 
Holder says, “was a vivid or scarlet mass of plumes. The dorsal 
spines, which merged into a long dorsal fin, extended to the tail. 
The color of the body was a brilliant silver sheen, splashed with 
equally vivid black zebra-like stripes." Mr. Holder was unable to 
obtain either specimen, the finders insisting on placing them on 
a piece of board to be dried in the sun as « curios.” In this con- 
dition the water soon evaporated, and practically nothing was left. 
In Science for Dec. 13, r9or, Gill and Townsend give an account 
of a large fish about five feet in length, dredged by the 4/batross at a 
depth of 1050 fathoms off the Chonos Archipelago in Chile. By 
some accident the huge specimen was cast overboard, and the 
description is made from a photograph. The fish is of trachinoid 

