The Lady-fishes
BODY rather long, not much compressed, covered with rather small, brilliantly silvery scales; head naked; snout conic, subquadrangular, shaped like that of a pig and overlapping the small, inferior, horizontal mouth; maxillary rather strong, short, with a distinct supplemental bone; premaxillaries short, not protractile; jaws, vomer, and palatines with bands of villiform teeth; broad patches of coarse, blunt teeth on the tongue; eye large, median in head, a bony ridge above it, and almost covered with an annular adipose eyelid; preopercle with a broad, flat, membranaceous edge; pseudobranchiae present; gill-membranes entirely separate and free from the isthmus; a fold of skin across gill-membranes anteriorly; no gular plate; lateral line present; belly flattish; covered with ordinary scales; caudal widely forked.
