LUMP SUCKERS. 
293 
fathoms, between Jan Mayen and Bear Islands. As we 
have stated above, the three specimens between 51 and 
89 mm. in length which were taken on the voyage of 
the Knight-Errant in 1880, at a depth of 540 — 608 
fathoms, between the Faroe Islands and the Shetlands, 
and described by Gunther under the name of Liparis 
micropus, probably belong to this species. The Dijmphna 
Expedition brought home from Kara Sea a specimen 
taken at a depth of 64 fathoms. Reinhardt and Kkoyki; 
possessed specimens from Greenland. Nothing more is 
known of its manner of life than that, like other deep- 
sea fishes, it may sometimes be driven in some way 
from its true home to the higher marine regions, where 
it helplessly drifts ashore before the wind, as described 
by Pallas in Kamchatka. The spawning-season occurs, 
according to Steller’s observations, in May, and in 
the larger females the eggs are then of the size of a 
pea. In the small females the eggs are also smaller: 
Collett found them to be about as large as a poppy- 
seed. Cyclogaster gelatinosus is of still less economical 
value to man than the preceding species: even the Si- 
berian dogs, says Steller, however hungry they may 
be, refuse to eat it. 
Genus CYCLOPTERUS. 
Body bulky, short and thick {during youth, however, much the same as in the preceding genus). Skin fairly hard, 
and rough with spines and spinous tubercles (in youth, however, smooth). Two dorsal fins, but the anterior distinct 
only during youth, in older specimens to a greater or less extent, sometimes completely , overgrown and hidden by 
the skin. Branchiostegal rays well- dev eloped. Skeleton weakly ossified; vertebrae at most 30. 
b 
Cl 
Fig. 74. Two early juvenile stages of Cyclopterus hnnpus; a: at a length of 4 min.; b: at a length of 5 mm. After A. Agassiz. 
The slight granulation of the skin which some- 
times appears in adult specimens of the preceding ge- 
nus, and the curve in the upper margin of the dorsal 
fin which we find in Cyclogaster Montagui or, still 
deeper, in the Californian Cycl. mucosus, are sufficient 
indications of the close relationship between the pre- 
ceding genus and Cyclopterus. This relationship appears 
still more distinctly from a study of the juvenile forms 
of the latter genus, which in their earliest stages of 
development (fig. 74) are elongated like Cyclogaster, 
and may retain the nakedness of the skin even after 
they have attained their own proper form in other 
respects. Like the preceding genus, too, Cyclopterus is 
furnished with an osseous connexion between the sub- 
orbital ring and the preoperculum, though from the 
almost membranous texture of the bones this connexion 
is easily overlooked®. These resemblances speak strongly 
in favour of the retention of these two genera in the 
same family, even without their separation into distinct 
subfamilies, in spite of the great external differences 
It is distinctly and correctly shown, however, in Rosenthal’s Ichthyotomisehe Tafeln, tab. XIX, fig. 1. 
