. Bulletin of the Natural History Museum Zoology. 18 FERRARIS, JR. description, or in variance with the illustration. Although Jayaram (1966) followed Vinciguerra (1890) in placing Rita sacerdotum into the synonymy of Rita rita, he place the specimens he examined from the Ayeyarwaddy into a second species of Rita. I have been unable, so far, to find any specimens that represented a second species from Myanmar. Clearly, an examination of the holotype of Rita sacerdotum was necessary to determine whether it indeed represented a species of Rita different from the one that I, and others, have
. Bulletin of the Natural History Museum Zoology. 18 FERRARIS, JR. description, or in variance with the illustration. Although Jayaram (1966) followed Vinciguerra (1890) in placing Rita sacerdotum into the synonymy of Rita rita, he place the specimens he examined from the Ayeyarwaddy into a second species of Rita. I have been unable, so far, to find any specimens that represented a second species from Myanmar. Clearly, an examination of the holotype of Rita sacerdotum was necessary to determine whether it indeed represented a species of Rita different from the one that I, and others, have observed. THE HOLOTYPE OF RITA SACERDOTUM ANDERSON Anderson (1878 [1879]) did not indicate where the holotype of Rita sacerdotum, or any of the other species described in the same paper, were deposited. Although I expected to find the specimen in The Natural History Museum, London, the holotype was not listed in its type catalog, and there was no entry for R. sacerdotum in their species catalog. In fact, no specimen of Rita collected by Anderson was listed in the catalog. An exhaustive search through the registers did uncover a Rita sacerdotum collected by Anderson, without any indication that it was a holotype. With the assistance of the staff of the Fish Section of the Zoology Department, the specimen was found among the collection of stuffed, dried fish specimens. Its identity as the holotype was promptly made by comparsion of the stated locality information and by direct comparision with the published illustration. It is puzzling that the specimen was never recognized as the holotype of Rita sacerdotum. Although the specimen was registered in 1875, prior to Anderson's publication, the register entry (BMNH ) lists the name and is surrounded by entries for the other species named by Anderson. It is even more suprising that although the specimen was registered with the new name during Albert Gunther's tenure, he did not include the specimen in his personal annotated
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