LIFE IN TEFFE. 



237 



engaged in catching the tiniest fishes, so insignificant in 

 size that the regular fishermen, who can never be made 

 to understand that a fish which is not good to eat can 

 serve any useful purpose, always throw them away. Nev- 

 ertheless, these are among the most instructive specimens 

 for the ichthyologist, because they often reveal the relations 

 not only between parent and offspring, but wider relations 

 between different groups. Mr. Agassiz's investigations on 

 these little fish here have shown repeatedly that the young 

 of some species resemble closely the adult of others. Such 

 a fish, not more than half an inch long, was brought to him 

 yesterday. It constitutes a new genus, Lymnobelus, and 

 belongs to the bill-fish family, Scomberesoces, with Belone 

 and others, — that long, narrow type, with a long beak, 

 which has such a wide distribution over the world. In the 

 Northern United States, as well as in the Mediterranean, it 

 has a representative of the genus Scomberesox, in which the 

 jaws of its long snout are gaping ; in the Mediterranean, 

 and almost everywhere in the temperate and torrid zones, 

 Belones are found in which, on the contrary, the bill is 

 closed ; in Florida and on the Brazilian coast, as well as in 

 the Pacific, species of Hemirhamphus occur in which the two 

 jaws are unequal, the upper one being very short and the 

 lower one enormously long, while the Amazonian bill-fish 

 has a somewhat different cut of the bill from either of 

 those mentioned above, though both jaws are very long, 

 as in Belone. When, then, the young of this Amazonian 

 species was brought to Mr. Agassiz, he naturally expected 

 to find it like its parent. On the contrary, he found it far 

 more like the species of Florida and the Brazilian coast, 

 having the two jaws unequal, the upper one excessively 

 short, the lower enormously long, showing that tlie Ama- 



