SEA SCORPION. 
181 
The Sea Scorpion is one of the most variable forms 
and has therefore, not without reason, borne many sy- 
stematic names. The merit of referring all the specific 
names given in the above list of synonyms to one single 
species, was first gained by Professor Malmgren in his 
excellent revision of “The Fishes of Spitsbergen.” Be- 
sides the various forms which appear within the limits 
now accepted for the species, we find several other 
forms which cannot be included within these limits, but 
which, either as intermediate forms or by their changes 
of development, range themselves so close to Coitus 
scorpius that natural series may be traced in one di- 
rection to the genus Cottunculus, in another to Coitus 
quadricornis and in a third to the more nearly Scor- 
pamoid Coitus bubalis. One of these intermediate forms 
by the low tail to that group of the genus of which 
Coitus quadricornis is the best-known representative. 
From this group Coitus scorpius itself forms the tran- 
sition to the bubalis ( Enophrys ) group. 
The Sea Scorpion — as in some respects the fol- 
lowing species — thus stands at the centre, so to speak, 
of the developmental range of the family, with branches 
in several directions; and its varieties of form gain 
greater importance, the more fully we are able to 
explain the circumstances from which they have arisen. 
Mobius and Heincke have given d the following list of 
the changes of form which occurred in about 300 spe- 
cimens examined by them and taken in the south-west 
of the Baltic. The largest of these specimens were 
300 mm. in length. 
Fig. 53. Cottus platycephalus , Najtschkaj, 10th April, 1879, Vega Expedition. Natural size. 
we find in the Siberian Cottus platyceplicdus a , which 
by Cottus tceniopterus h and Cottus Brandtii c is united 
to Cottus scorpius , but by its small eyes, the great 
breadth of the interorbital space and the long lower 
jaw, which projects beyond the tip of the snout, guides 
us to the transition to Cottunculus , and again is referred 
229 specimens (84 %) had only 3 spines in the pre- 
opereular margin, 
28 ,, (10 %) had 4 spines in the preopercular 
margin on one side of the body, 
17 ,, (6 °/o) had 4 spines in the preopercular 
margin on each side of the body, 
“ Pallas: Zoogr. Ross. Asiat., tom. Ill, p. 135; but without palatine teeth and with the fin-formula: D. 9 [ 1 5 ; A. 13; P. 16; V. l /,; 
C. cc+7-vas. This is the form in which this species appears in the collections of the Vega Expedition from Najtschkaj (the extreme north-east 
point o£ Siberia) — cf. the Catalogue of the Swedish Department of the Fisheries Exhibition in Loudon 1883, p. 174. It thus does not 
tally with the description given by Pallas, to which Kner’s Cottus tceniopterus perhaps answers better. As Pallas states, however, that his 
species is common in these regions, and as it would appear never to have been found again by later explorers, there seems to me to be very 
little danger in employing his name, which is at any rate most suitable for this species. 
b Kner, Stzber. Akad. Wiss. Wien. Math. Naturw. Cl., LVIII, i (1868), p. 310, pi. IV, fig. 10. 
c Steindachner, ibid., LV, i (1867), p. 706, pi. Ill, figs. 1 and 2. 
d Fische der Ostsee , p. 44. 
