An account of the fishes found in the river Ganges and its branches /

Ratt 'SsMurcena.GANGETIC FISHES.Qn grows to eighteen inches or two feet in length.The under parts are of a white colour, and, where this unites with the brown of the back, the sides are covered with dots.The head is narrow and long, and ends in a sharp point.The mouth is very wide, and opens straight back.The jams do not protrude in opening, and are blunt and covered by lips.In the fore part of each jaw are about six long sharp teeth.In the sides of the upper jaw there are none; but in those of the under jaw there are many small ones.In the middle of the palate there are three rows.The teeth in the side rows are small and irregularly crowded; in the middle row they are placed at a distance from each other, are large, compressed, and divided into lobes.The eyes are high, large, and oblong, with circular pupils.The xosérils are double, the anterior apertures being tubular.The gill-covers are small.The membrane which ties them down is long and thick, and streaked with several fine rays, which cannot be distinctly numbered, and which leave a small crescent-shaped GANGETIC FISHES.Order II.On account of the number of fins this eel is nearly allied to the fish described by Russell, (Indian Fishes, Vol.I. No. 34,) which wants the dots on the body, and has three apertures on each side of the nose.This eel seldom exceeds a foot in length, and is less disgusting in appearance than most fishes of the kind.The under parts are white.The head is small, oval, and sharpish.The mouth is small.In each nostril there are two apertures; neither of them tubular.There are strong ¢eeth in both jaws.The eyes are small, high, and far forward.There are no gill-covers ; but a very dilatable membrane, which is striated with some slender rays, that cannot be exactly numbered, and leave a small round opening at each pectoral fin.The 6ody is not compressed.'The lateral line runs straight along the middle of the side.The vent is behind the middle.The éat/ tapers to a blunt end.The back jin is behind the middle, and contains thirty-two rays of nearly equal length.The pectoral fins are minute and rounded, and each contains eight rays.The anal fin commences near the vent, and contains fifty rays of nearly equal length.The ¢ad/ fin is rounded, and contains sixty rays.V. Genus.-Macroenatuvs.Fishes of the second order, covered with very minute scales, somewhat like a serpent, armed with prickles before the back and anal fins, and having a fin on the tail.The fishes of this genus were formerly included among the Ophidiums ; and, as the species of both were not very numerous, one genus might, perhaps, have included the whole without inconvenience.While there was only one genus, the specific names aculeatum and armatum, given to two species,The head is half oval, and flat above.The mouth is larger, and the snout shorter than in the other species.The dips are thick, with scarcely any bone; the inferior one is very blunt.In both jaws, which do not protrude in opening, are many sharp teeth, nearly equal in size, and closely imbricated.The Macrognathus .GANGETIC FISHES.29 tongue is blunt, and free from the under jaw.The palate is smooth.The nostrils are single.The eyes are far back in the middle of the head.The gill-covers are scaly.The éail is blunt.The vent is near the middle.The prickles before the back fin are about thirty-seven ; before the anal fin they are two in number.The back, tail, and anal fins can only be distinguished by the rays of the tail being a little longer than the others.Those in the back part are from eighty-three to eighty-five, those in the tail seventeen, and those in the vent part from eighty-eight to ninety.Each pectoral fin contains twenty-one divided rays.2d Species.-MacroGNnaTHUs ACULEATUS.A macrognathus with several eye-like spots on the back fin, -which is distinct from that of the tail.