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Show 334 MR. J. COUCH ON AUSONIA CUVIERI. [June 12, below, and between these portions a pair widely apart and more fan-shaped. Colour along the upper line of the head and body dark, with a cast of blue; all besides bright silvery ; and I was informed that when first obtained, as the sun shone upon it, the brilliancy was such as to dazzle the eyes. Pectoral fins, caudal, and for the most part the anal brilliant red, the first ray with its membrane of the latter thicker than the others ; the dorsal also a brilliant red, but the first three rays of this fin, with their membrane, firmer and redder than the others; the membrane between the other rays of this fin bordered with dark. The upper pharyngeal bones were numerous, hooked, slender, sharp, projecting, in, as usual, two pair of beds. Air-bladder large. Nothing in the stomach ; but its inner surface studded over with projecting fleshy processes. I was not able to ascertain the weight of this fish; but while by the fisherman who obtained it it was judged to be about forty pounds, by others it was believed to be at the least double that weight. In the account which Rafinesque gives of his example of this fish he makes the absence of a lateral line to be a character of the genus, with the vent situated under the pectoral fin, and having on its anterior border a valve to cover it. His specimen was obtained in the middle of June, in the year 1808, near Solanto, in Sicily; and in describing it he especially notices the absence of teeth and the limited extent of the mouth; the branchial rays four; rays of the dorsal and anal fins fourteen, of the pectoral twelve, in which probably he did not count such as were of small size, or they might have been lost. And he adds that it was called by the people " Luvaru Im-periale," from the resemblance of its colour in some particulars to that of the fish Luvaro, which is the local name of the Sparus pa-gellus; but whether this name was imposed on it at the moment or from long usage be does not say. Dr. Gulia, in bis enumeration of the fish of his native island Malta, says nothing of this species, except in a M S . note written in a copy of the work kindly presented to me by himself (Tentamen Ichthyologiae Melitensis) ; but in another work (Repertorio di Storia Naturale, 1864) he mentions it on the authority of Professor Terafa, who appears to have seen even more than one example in that island. But it is to Nardo, in his Inaugural Thesis, that we are indebted for a more extended account of this fish, as well of its external as of its internal structure, together with a figure, which, it not in the best style of art, is sufficiently exact to assure us of the form of the specie's. It appears, however, to have been drawn after the specimen had passed under the hands of the preserving artist; but in referring to his description I shall notice only those prominent particulars which throw some light on my own description and observations. It was in September 1826 that his example was caught, by some boys with their hands as it wandered among some rocks close to the shore in the harbour of Palestrina; and at the time when he wrote, it was preserved in a private museum at that |
