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Show 1 9 0 5 . ] ON DRAWINGS OF FISHES OF THE RIO NEGRO. 1 8 9 Mr. C. Tate Regan, B.A., F.Z.S., exhibited an interesting series of pencil-sketches of Fishes of the Rio Negro and its tributaries, made by Dr. A. R. Wallace about fifty years ago. Most unfortunately the magnificent collection of Fishes which they represented, containing examples of about 200 species, was lost on the voyage home. Dr. Wallace had presented the drawings, accompanied by notes on the dentition, the number of fin-rays, and the coloration, to the British Museum, and Mr. Regan had been engaged in their determination. A complete list of those which he had been able to identify follows, but in the case of the others, a large proportion of which probably represented species as yet undescribed, it had seemed best not to reproduce the drawings nor to publish notes on them, but they served to illustrate the incompleteness of our knowledge of the fishes of the Amazon and its tributaries. For example, the Cichlid genus Crenicichla, a revision of which was read before a recent meeting of this Society, was represented by 10 species. Of these only 5 had been determined, including C. lenticulata Heck., unrepresented in the British Museum Collection, and one described from the Essequibo under the name of C. wcillacii *. The other 5 had very distinctive characters, and certainly did not belong to any of the species recognised in Mr. Regan's revision. It was rather curious that Dr. Wallace should have collected so few Loricariidae. The remarkable habits of the little Silurid Vandellia cirrhosa had been the subject of a communication made to this Society by Mr. Boulenger (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1897, p. 901), and it was interesting to read Dr. Wallace's notes on this subject t :- u The stomach is generally more or less filled with blood as it [the fish] attaches itself to other fish and aquatic animals and sucks them. This minute fish enters the urinary passage of men and women, wounds and extracts blood within, and all efforts to extract it are usually unavailing. Effusion of blood, inflammation, and death have in several instances occurred." The Fishes identified were :- Torpedinidre :- Tceniura motoro Mull. & Henle. Osteoglossidae :- Osteoglossum bicirrhosum Vandelli. Symbranchidse :-Symbranchus marmoratus Bl. Scombresocidae :-Belone tceniata Giinth. Characinidse :-Macrodon trahira Spix ; Erythrinus unitceniatus Spix, E. salmoneus Gronov., E. longipianis Giinth.; Pyrrhulina filamentosa Cuv. & Y a l.; Curimatus schomburgkii Giinth., C. spilar us Giinth., C. alburnus Miill. & Trosch., C. elongatus Spix ; Prochilodus insignis Schomb.; ffemiodus immaculatus Kner, II. unimaculatus Miill. & Trosch.; Anostomus tceniatus Kner, A. gracilis Kner; Leporinus fasciatus BL, Z. affinis Giinth., L. nigro-tceniatus Schomb., L. striatus Kner, L.frederici Bl., L. leschenaultii Cuv. & Val., L. nattereri Steind., L. margaritaceus Giinth. ; * Regan, supra, p. 163, pi. xiv. fig. 2. t See also note in Arch, de Parasitol. vii. 1903, p. 168 (1904). |