The author wishes to express his sincere gratitude to Dr. Tokiharu Abe who gave him the present theme and guided him in every way. Thanks are also due to the staffs of the Zoological Institute, the Misaki Marine Biological Station, and the University Museum, all of the University of Tokyo, for their encouragement and for giving him every facility for this work.

The author is much obliged to the following people for their kind assistance and for the loan of specimens: Dr. John E. Randall of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu; Drs. Peter J. Whitehead and G. Palmer of the British Museum (Natural History); Dr. Richard C. Wass of the Government of American Samoa; Dr. Isaac I. Ikehara of the Government of Guam; Dr. Michael Walker of James Cook University of North Queensland; Mr. Soko Gushiken of the Government of Okinawa Pref.; Dr. Tamotsu Iwai of Kyoto University; Dr. Tetsuya Sato of the Far Seas Fisheries Research Laboratory, Shimizu; Dr. Kenichiro Kyushin of Hokkaido University; Dr. Charles Roux of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris; Dr. Margaret M. Smith of Rhodes University, Grahamstown; Dr. M. Boeseman of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden; Dr. Wolfgang Klausewitz of the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Drs. Katsuzo Kuronuma and Kiyoshi Fujita of Tokyo University of Fisheries; Dr. Christine Karrer of the Zoologisches Museum an der Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin; and Dr. Jørgen G. Nielsen of the Zoologisk Museum, København.

Dr. Michael Hirshfield of Claremont Colleges kindly corrected the English of the manuscript.

This work was supported in part by grants from the Ito Foundation for the Advancement of Ichthyology which enabled the author to study at museums in Europe.