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PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. VII, April, 1953 
the major classification of the family, but was 
primarily interested in development and spe- 
ciation. In fact, he has made the Paralepididae 
the best-known group of the order Iniomi in 
this respect. 
Ege’s results were interpreted by Parr 
(1931^), who assumed that Lestidium was un- 
tenable and that the limits of the genus Para- 
lepis had to be considerably extended to en- 
compass a highly variable group— at least as 
long as practicable generic distinctions had 
not become re-established on a different mor- 
phological basis. Thus, if Parr’s classification 
of 1928 were altered to fit this idea, all the 
species of "Paralepidini,” tyiQQpt Sudis hyalina, 
would be placed in the genus Paralepis. 
Ege (1933) preliminarily diagnosed 15 new 
species and a new genus, Macroparalepis, from 
a part of the paralepidid material collected— 
usually at great depths— by the 1928-30 "Da- 
na” Expedition around the world. Unfortu- 
nately, the specimens are all postlarvae or 
juveniles, the descriptions are brief, and the 
relationships are not indicated for the species 
of Macroparalepis. Lestidium and Paralepis were 
compared with Macroparalepis. Dr. Ege is still 
studying this material and plans to publish 
more complete accounts. 
Gregory and Conrad (1936; 28) also at- 
tempted to give a natural phylogeny of the 
order Iniomi. Their classification, which ap- 
pears to have been done primarily by a com- 
parison of illustrations of the species and 
superficial examination of the literature, adds 
little to our knowledge of the family Para- 
lepididae. They apparently misinterpreted 
some of Parr’s findings of 1929 and did not 
include the papers of Ege (1930, 1933) and 
Parr (1931). 
Jensen (1942), in his critical review of the 
paralepidids of Greenland, gives important 
discussions of the genus Paralepis. One of the 
most important parts of his results is a de- 
tailed account of the structure of the lateral- 
line and scales. It is important to note that 
Jensen confuses the ossified sections of the 
lateral-line tube and the overlying lateral-line 
scales. 
In a monograph of the paralepidid fishes 
in the collection of the Municipal Museum 
of Funchal, Madeira, Maul (1945) included 
material of Sudis, Paralepis, and Macropara- 
lepis and confined the limits of the family to 
these genera. He presented definitions of the 
genera for the first time since Parr (1928). 
Maul described more adult material than any 
other recent worker and described larger spe- 
cimens of Macroparalepis for the first time. 
These classifications of Parr, Ege, and Maul 
differ essentially from my results, presented 
in the next section, in that I place Sudis in a 
distinct subfamily (Sudinae) and divide the 
Paralepidinae into two basic groups of genera 
that can be easily distinguished by osteolo- 
gical characters, by gillraker structure, by ex- 
tent of squamation in the adults, and by 
morphometry. These two basic divisions of 
the Paralepidinae correspond to groups I and 
II of Ege’s key (1930: 7). An outline of this 
classification is presented with the description 
of the paralepidids collected by the Bermuda 
Oceanographic Expeditions of the New York 
Zoological Society (Harry, 1951). 
DISCUSSION 
Family PARALEPIDIDAE 
Paralepidini Bonaparte, 1832-41 (no pagina- 
tion), 1846; Bellotti, 1878; Parr, 1928: 17, 
32; Parr, 1929: 28. 
Paralepidina Gunther, 1864: 418. 
Paralepididae Gill, 1874: 16; Gill, 1893: 131; 
Goode and Bean, 1895: 118. 
Paralepidinae Jordan and Evermann, 1896: 
599. 
Paralepidae Dollo, I9O8: 59; Jordan, 1923: 
154. 
Sudidae (in part) Regan, 1911: 125; Parr, 1928: 
15; Parr, 1929: 27; Ege, 1933: 223; Fowler, 
1944: 438. 
Sudini Berg, 1940: 257, 437. 
Sudidae 1942: 3; Maul, 1945; 3. 
DIAGNOSIS: Body compressed, elongate. 
Belly usually constricted, forming a pro- 
