DEVELOPMENT AND LIFE HISTORY OF SOME TELEOSTS 
587 
Specimens 8.0 to 10 mm long . — The body is rather deep and strongly compressed, 
the depth being contained about 3.4 to 4.0 times in the length without the caudal fin. 
The head is deep, the snout remains excessively short, as in smaller specimens, and 
the forehead is very steep. The snout projects in front of the orbit a distance scarcely 
equal to half the diameter of the eye. The mouth is small, placed very low, almost 
horizontal, and terminal to slightly inferior. The tip of the lower jaw is on, or a 
little below, the level of the lower margin of the eye, and the maxillary reaches to, or 
slightly past, the anterior margin of the pupil. The interorbital remains quite flat, 
Figure 87.— I-Iypsoblennius hentz. From a young fish 6.2 mm long. 
with a prominent bony ridge over and in front of the eye. The preopercular spines, 
while well developed in specimens 8.0 mm long, are proportionately longer in specimens 
10 mm in length. The dorsal and anal fins are quite fully developed and a fairly 
accurate count of the rays can be made; the caudal fin has an almost straight margin 
and is about as long as the head; the ventral fins are well developed and are long and 
slender, being nearly as long as the head without the snout; and the pectoral fins are 
large, being nearly or quite as long as the head. The lower surface of the head and 
chest is variously dotted with black, generally with a few definite dark spots slightly 
behind the articulation of the lower jaw, also with a pair of dark spots a short distance 
in advance of the ventral fins, and another pair in the axiles of the ventrals. The side 
of the head has a few indefinite spots or blotches and the upper surface of the head, 
that is from the interorbital backward, bears brownish spots with dark center and 
dark outline. The pectoral fin is almost wholly black in some specimens; in others 
two to four of the upper rays are pale, while the rest of the fin is black, and the oblique 
dark bar behind the pectoral, very prominent in smaller fish, has become quite obscure 
in 10-mm fish. A row of fine dark points along the base of the anal is present in some 
specimens, but not evident in others (fig. 88). 
