602 
SCANDINAVIAN FISHES. 
been found oil the south coast of Ireland lying dead 
on the beach after a storm. Through professor S. 
Loven the Royal Museum received in 1880 a specimen 
that had been caught by Fisherman B. Westergren 
“at a depth of from 100 to 200 fathoms on the Jut- 
land Reef,” west of the Skaw. This specimen seems 
to have been taken from the stomach of some larger 
fish (probably a Cod or Ling) where it had some time 
undergone the process of digestion, for the skin together 
with all the fins and a great portion of the tail has 
been digested, the hindmost of the remaining vertebrae 
being quite bare. In its present condition the specimen 
is 188 mm. long, the greatest depth of the body 11 
mm., the length of the head 23 mm., the length of the 
lower jaw 13 mm., the longitudinal diameter of the 
orbit 4'5 mm., the length of the eye-ball 3‘6 mm., the 
postorbital length of the head 16 mm., and the distance 
between the tip of the snout and the vent 29 mm. 
To judge by the length of the head the specimen, when 
perfect, has been only slightly smaller than the one 
described by Collett. The latter specimen was 225 
mm. long; it was found in March, 1881, floating at the 
surface off Rovaer, outside Stavanger Fjord, and for- 
warded by Dr. Jensen to Bergen Museum. These two 
specimens are up to the present the only finds of the 
species within the limits of the Scandinavian fauna. 
According to Couch (1. c.) the distinguished collector 
and observer Thomas Edwards found 6 small examples 
of this species, between 6 and 7 cm. long, in March, 
1863, on a sandy bottom off the coast of Banff. They 
moved through the water, he wrote, like Pipe-fishes, but 
never attempted to hide among seaweed or under stones, 
preferring to keep to the sand, where they would lie for 
hours with the body in an undulating or curved position. 
Fam. LYCODIDiE. 
Body elongated , more or less anguilliform, in front terete, behind compressed, naked or covered with thin cycloid 
scales. All the vertical fins confluent; no separate caudal fin. Jaws (. sometimes the palate as ivell) armed with 
teeth. Gill-openings vertical and small, the branchiostegal membranes coalescing below with the shin and forming 
a broad isthmus. Pseudobranchice distinct. Air-bladder wanting. Pyloric appendages usually wanting, 
but sometimes present in a rudimentary form. 
This family, which we here range last among the 
Anacanthini, occupies a singular intermediate position 
between other types. Artedi" and Linnaeus 6 referred 
the only species that they knew, the Eelpout or Vivi- 
parous Blenny, to the genus Blennius; Gisler 6 , the 
first to discover the occurrence of this species in Scan- 
dinavia, regarded it as an intermediate form between 
Blennius and Ophidion. Cuvier^ adhered to Artedi’s 
opinion, and Reinhardt 6 , the first describer of the 
types of the second division of the family, acknowledged 
that Lycodes ought to be referred to Cuvier’s Mala- 
copterygii thoracici, but still ranged the genus beside the 
Blennies, on the grounds that it was a link between 
Anarrhichas and Zoar evens ( Enchelyopus ), which latter 
a Syn. Pise., p. 45. 
b Fn. Suec., ed. II, p. 113. 
c Vet.-Akad. Hand!. 1748, p. 42. 
d R'egne Animal , ed. II, tome II, p. 240. 
e Danske Vid. Selsk. Naturv., Math. Afh., Dee] 7, p. 147. 
t Abh. Akad. Wiss. Berlin 1844, p. 165. 
,J Sveriges och Norges fislcar, part II, p. 17. 
genus “evidently was an offshoot of the Gadoid family.” 
The same reasoning recurs in Muller 7 , who united the 
Lycodidce to the Blenniidce on account of the pseudo- 
branchite. Lilljeborg 9, has grouped together the osteo- 
logical characters that separate the Lycodidce from the 
Gadidce. We notice in particular the absence in the 
former of the two characteristics of the latter that we 
have mentioned above, namely the great extent of the 
styloid bone (a character which is also wanting, how- 
ever, in the Sand-Eels) and the lobate process on the 
hind part of the upper margin of the intermaxillary 
bones (which is also wanting in the Ophidioids). By 
the majority of their characters, however, the Lycodoids 
are joined to the other Onomorphi as Malacopterygian 
