58 
April 9, 1850. 
Prof. Owen, V.P., F.R.S., in the Chair. 
The following papers were read :— 
1. Notices of Australian Fish. By Sir John Richardson, 
M.D., F.R.S. etc. 
(Pisces, PI. I. II. III.) 
In the third volume of the ‘ Zoological Transactions / the * Maga¬ 
zine and Annals of Natural History/ vol. ix.; a report on the “Fish 
of New Zealand,” made to the British Association in 1842; the 
Ichthyology of the Voyage of the Sulphur, and especially in the 
Ichthyology of the Antarctic Voyage of the Erebus and Terror, com¬ 
pleted in February 1848, I have described various species of Austra¬ 
lian fish. Among other sources of information to which I had re¬ 
course, a collection of drawings, made by Deputy Assistant Commis¬ 
sary General Neill, in 1841, at King George’s Sound, is particularly 
valuable on account of the notices it contains of the habits and qua¬ 
lities of the fish. The drawings are so characteristic, that most of 
the species are easily recognised, but some novel forms could not be 
systematically described without specimens, and the opportunity now 
afforded me by Mr. Gray of inspecting a number of dried skins pre¬ 
pared on the spot by Mr. Neill, has given occasion to the present 
paper. 
Apistes panduratus, Richardson. 
Radii. —B. 7 ; D. 17|7 ; A. 3|6 ; C. 12f; P.14; V. 1|5, spec. 
(Pisces, PI. I. fig. 3, 4.) 
Among the various forms that the genus Apistes presents, the 
present one is remarkable for the elevation of the orbit, which rises 
in a semicircular protuberance, so high above the occiput as to give 
the hinder part of the head a relative depression like a Turkish saddle, 
and to render the snout and forehead almost vertical. 
The mouth is terminal and small, and both jaws, with the chevron 
of the vomer and a round patch on each palatine bone, are furnished 
with minute, short villiform teeth. The intermaxillaries are mode¬ 
rately protractile, and the maxillary, whose dilated lower end drops 
below the corner of the mouth, has its posterior edge turned out¬ 
wards producing a ridge. The nasal spines are thick, but acute, and 
are bent to the curve of the forehead. There is a narrow deep groove 
between them. This groove widens on the top of the head, where it is 
bounded by smooth ridges continued from the nasal spines, and in con¬ 
junction with them the raised edges of the orbits form an exterior fur¬ 
row on each side. These four furrows and ridges end in obtuse emi¬ 
nences which cross from the superior-posterior angle of one orbit to the 
other. Behind them the skull sinks perpendicularly to the level of 
the nearly flat, depressed occiput, on which however the middle ridges 
are still visible. The preorbitar is small, very uneven, and emits a 
