Genera of Paralepididae — Harry 
221 
as valid, on the basis of the presence of scales 
in one genus and their absence in the other. 
Parr and Ege attempted by subsequent in- 
vestigation to demonstrate that this type of 
division was not justified. The two reasons 
why Parr’s classification of 1928 was not ac- 
cepted by subsequent authors (including him- 
self) are: (1) he did not recognize that Sudis 
hyalina was so distinct from all other para- 
lepidids that it deserved monotypic generic 
status; (2) he based his generic characters for 
Sudis and Lestidium solely on the presence or 
absence of scales. It was not known at that 
time that the species of the family could be 
arranged in a uniformly graded series from 
(a) those completely scaled on head and body, 
through (b) those scaled only on body or 
head, through (c) those scaled only late in 
development, to (d) those lacking scales at 
all stages of development. Furthermore, he 
used the generic name Sudis for the scaled 
species, but the generic type {hyalina) is al- 
most completely naked at all stages. In addi- 
tion, each of his genera included both naked 
and scaled species. 
Parr (1929: 4, 7) in a paper on the osteology 
and classification of the Iniomi, pursued fur- 
ther the relationships of the families. His in- 
vestigations of the Paralepididae are based on 
the partial osteology of two representatives of 
''Lestidium' {Paralepis hrevirostris and a spe- 
cies of Lestidium). It represents the first re- 
search of this kind on the family. Parr pro- 
posed a phylogenetic line on the basis of 
osteological characters, from Chlorophthalmus 
through Bathysudis to Omosudis, "thereby in- 
directly establishing a relationship between 
the Sudidae and Alepisauridae." 
The generic relationships of the Paralepi- 
didae adopted by Parr (1928, 1929) and others 
were subsequently greatly modified on the 
basis of an extensive distributional and sys- 
tematic research on the genus "Paralepis" of 
the North Atlantic by Ege (1930). His rich 
material was composed almost exclusively of 
larval to juvenile specimens. The identifica- 
tions he made of these early stages with pre- 
viously known adult forms are particularly 
valuable for the elucidation of the taxonomic 
and nomenclatural problems which had de- 
veloped in the earlier literature. His generic 
classification is essentially the same as that 
used by most previous European authors. He 
retained the genus Sudis as monotypic and 
expanded the limits of Paralepis. Although 
the relationship of the genus Lestidium to 
Paralepis was considered by Ege to be a matter 
beyond the scope of his investigation, he 
maintained that the recognition of Lestidium 
on the premise of its being devoid of scales 
was completely untenable. The Mediterranean 
and North Atlantic material available to him 
was represented by young material complete- 
ly devoid of scales; but he did not consider 
the lack of scales in the younger individuals 
necessarily to indicate their absence in the 
fully adult stage. For example, he found an 
individual oi" Paralepis rissoi" (which is scaled 
when adult) 188 millimeters in length which 
completely lacked any trace of scales. 
Unfortunately, Ege did not investigate the 
generic classification of the Paralepididae as 
carefully as he did the specific. He never de- 
fined the limits of the genus "Paralepis" as 
he accepted it, but apparently used it in the 
broad sense of early European authors. Ac- 
tually he did not realize the bearing of Lesti- 
dium to his work. He claimed that the genus 
Lestidium was beyond the scope of his in- 
vestigation, but included all species of this 
genus of which he had material in "Paralepis" 
and excluded almost all the others which he 
had not seen. 
While he claimed that Lestidium is unten- 
able on the basis of the lack of scales, Ege 
proved on morphometric grounds that the 
naked species can be recognized {vide the 
differentiation of groups I and II in his key). 
Apparently he never realized that his first 
division included all the scaly forms, and the 
second division all the forms naked even as 
adults. The mention of such discrepancies is 
not meant to detract from the value of his 
work. He was not concerned particularly with 
