CHAP. I.

The Division of Spinous Fishes.

THE third general division of fishes is into that of the Spinous or bony kind. These are obviously distinguished from the rest by having a complete bony covering to their gills; by their being furnished with no other method of breathing but gills only; by their bones, which are sharp and thorny; and their tails, which are placed in a situation perpendicular to the body. This is that class which alone our later naturalists are willing to admit as fishes. The Cetaceous class with them are but beasts that have taken up their abode in the ocean; the Cartilaginous class are an amphibious band, that are but half denizens of that element: it is fishes of the Spinous kind that really deserve the appellation.

This distinction the generality of mankind will hardly allow; but whatever be the justice of this preference in favour of the spinous classes, it is certaim that the cetaceous and cartilaginous classes bear no proportion to them in number. Of the spinous classes are already known above four hundred species; so that the numbers of the former are trifling in comparison, and make not above a fifth part of the finny creation.

From the great variety in this class, it is obvious how difficult a task it must have been to describe or remember even a part of what it contains. When six hundred different sorts of animals offer themselves to consideration, the mind is bewildered in

the multiplicity of objects that all lay some claim to its attention. To obviate this confusion, systems have been devised, which, throwing several fishes that agree in many particulars into one group, and thus uniting all into so many particular bodies, the mind that was incapable of separately considering each, is enabled to comprehend all when thus offered in larger masses to its consideration.

Indeed, of all the beings in animated nature, fishes most demand a systematical arrangement. Quadrupeds are but few, and can be all known; birds, from their seldom varying in their size, can be very tolerably distinguished without system; but among fishes, which no size can discriminate, where the animal ten inches and the animal ten feet long is entirely the same, there must be some other criterion by which they are to be distinguished; something that gives precision to our ideas of the animal whose history we desire to know."

Of the real history of fishes, very little is yet known; but of very many we have full and sufficient accounts, as to their external form. It would be unpardonable, therefore, in a history of these animals not to give the little we do know; and, at least, arrange our forces, though we cannot tell their destination. In this art of arrangement, Artedi and Linnæus have long been conspicuous: they have both taken a view of the animal's form in dif ferent lights; and from the parts which most struck them, have founded their respective systems.

Artedi, who was foremost, perceiving that some fishes had hard prickly fins, as the pike; that others had soft pliant ones, as the herring; and that others still wanted that particular fin by which the gills

are opened and shut, as the eel, made out a system from these varieties. Linnæus, on the other hand, rejecting this system, which he found liable to too many exceptions, considered the fins, not with regard to their substance, but their position. The ventral fins seem to be the great object of his system; he considers them in fishes as supplying the same offices as feet in quadrupeds; and from their total absence, or from their being situated nearer the head or the tail, in different fishes, he takes the differences of his system.

These arrangements, which are totally arbitrary, and which are rather a method than a science, are always fluctuating; and the last is generally preferred to that which went before. There has lately appeared, however, a system, composed by M. Gouan of Montpellier, that deserves applause for more than its novelty. It appears to me the best arrangement of this kind that ever was made: and in it the divisions are not only precisely systematical, but in some measure adopted by Nature itself. This learned Frenchman has united the systems of Artedi and Linnæus together; and by bringing one to correct the other, has made out a number of tribes, that are marked with the utmost precision. A part of his system, however, we have already gone through in the cartilaginous, or, as he calls a part of them, the branchiostegous tribe of fishes. In the arrangement of these I have followed Linnæus, as the number of was but small, and his method them simple. But in that which is more properly called the Spinous class of fishes, I will follow M. Gouan's system; the terms of which, as well as of all the former systems, require some explanation. I do

not love to multiply the technical terms of a science, but it often happens that names, by being long used, are as necessary to be known as the science itself.

If we consider the substance of the fin of a fish, we shall find it composed, besides the skin, either of straight, hard, pointed, bony prickles or spines as in the pike; or of soft, crooked, or forked bones, or cartilages, as in the herring. The fish that have prickly fins are called bony, Prickly-finned Fish; the latter, that have soft or cartilaginous fins, are called Soft-finned Fish. The prickly-finned fish have received the Greek new-formed name of Acanthopterigi; the soft-finned fish have likewise their barbarous Greek name of Malacopterigi. Thus far Artedi has supplied M. Gouan with names and divisions. All Spinous fish are divided into Pricklyfinned fish, and Soft-finned fish.

Again, Linnæus has taught him to remark the situation of the fins; for the ventral or belly fins, which are those particularly to be remarked, are either wholly wanting, as in the eel, and then the fish is called Apodal (a Greek word signifying without feet); or the ventral fins are placed more forward than the pectoral fins, as in the haddock, and then the animal is called a Jugular fish; or the ventral fins are placed directly under the pectoral fins, as in the father-lasher, and then it is called a Thoracic fish; or, lastly, the ventral fins are placed nearer the tail than the pectoral fins, as in the menow, and then it is an Abdominal fish.

Possessed of these distributions, the French naturalist mixes and unites them into two grand divisions. All the prickly-finned fish make one general division; all the soft-finned fish another, These

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first are distinguished from each other, as being either apodal, jugular, thoracic, or abdominal. Thus there are prickly-finned apodal fishes, pricklyfinned jugular fishes, prickly-finned thoracic fishes, and prickly-finned abdominal fishes. On the other hand, the soft-finned fishes fall under a similar distribution, and make the other general division. Thus there are soft-finned apodal fishes, soft-finned jugular fishes, soft-finned thoracic fishes, and softfinned abdominal fishes. These general characters are strongly marked, and easily remembered. It only remains, therefore, to divide these into such tribes as are most strongly marked by Nature; and to give the distinct characters of each, to form a complete system with great simplicity. This M. Gouan has done; and the tribes into which he has distributed each of these divisions, exactly amount to fifty. Thus the reader, who can contain in his memory the characteristic marks of fifty kinds, will have a tolerable idea of the form of every kind of spinous fish. I say, of the form; for as to the history and the nature of the animal itself, that can ́ only be obtained by experience and information.

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Prickly-finned Fishes.

PRICKLY-FINNED APODAL FISH.

1. THE Trichurus. The body of a sword-form ;› the head oblong; the teeth sword-like, bearded near the points; the fore-teeth largest; the fin that

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