274 Proceedings of the Boyal Physical Society. 
of Africa — the P. pahnas. In answer to inquiries, I am 
informed that several new species are at present in the 
collections of the British Museum, and were taken, I under- 
stand, in the river Nile. Some six species, or so, will there- 
fore include all that are known as belonging to the Genus 
Polypierus, and they are all natives of the fresh waters of the 
great continent of Africa. 
All the species of the genus appear to bear a very strik- 
ing resemblance to each other. They have the body elon- 
gated, full and rounded in front (about the region of the 
pectoral fins), a little behind the head ; and from this part 
it becomes more compressed in character laterally, and 
rapidly diminishes in breadth until it terminates in the 
rather broad caudal fin. 
The largest species are found in the river Nile, the Bichir t 
being described as measuring, when fully grown, some 2 , 
feet or more in length. It has no less than sixteen dorsal 
finlets, and these commence at but a short distance behind 
the head. The P. Endlicheri^ from the White Nile, has ; 
twelve of these dorsal finlets, beginning apparently at a i 
slightly greater proportional distance behind the head. ] 
The West African si3ecies, the P. senegahis, appears to 
be smaller in size, and with fewer dorsal finlets, which are 
ten in number, beginning also at a slightly greater propor- 
tional distance behind the head. While the P. palmas, 
from Cape Palmas, on the coast of Guinea, still farther to ^ 
the south, and almost in the same latitude as Old Calabar, 1 
is a fish of inches in length, has only seven dorsal i 
finlets, and these begin at a much greater proportional 
distance behind the head than in the other species, being 
only a very little in front of the middle of the fish, measur- i 
ing (in the published figure) from the snout to the extremity | 
of the caudal fin. > 
The two specimens of fish now exhibited from Old Calabar, ! 
although in many of their general characters they agree with , 
the characters of the Genus Polypterus, have the body much 
more elongated, and cylindrical in its form, and show, pro- 
portionally, less of the fiattened or laterally compressed 
character, as in all the species of Polypterus. It is in this 
