fish, which may be known by its wanting fins to open and shut the gills, which the cartilaginous kinds are wholly without. If I find that it has them, then it is a spinous fish ; and, in order to know its kind, I | examine its fins, whether they be prickly or soft: I find them soft; it is therefore to be ranked among the soft-finned fishes. I then examine its ventral or belly fins, and finding that the fish has them, I look for their situation, and find they lie nearer to the tail than the pectoral fins. By this I find the animal to be a soft-finned abdominal fish. Then, to know which of the kinds of these fishes it is, I examine its figure and the shape of its head, I find the body rather oblong; the head with a small beak; the lower jaw like a saw; the fin covering the gills with eight rays. This animal must therefore be the herring or one of that family, such as the pilchard, the sprat, the shad, or the anchovy. To give another instance: Upon examining the fins of a fish to me unknown, I find them prickly; I then look for the situation of the ventral fins, I find them entirely wanting; this then must be a pricklyfinned apodal fish. Of this kind there are but three; and by comparing the fish with the description, I find it either of the trichurus kind, the sword-fish, or the gilt-head. Upon examining also its internal structure, I shall find a very great similitude -between my fish and that placed at the head of the family. CHAP. II. Of Spinous Fishes in general. HAVING given a method by which spinous fishes may be distinguished from each other, the history of each in particular might naturally be expected to follow but such a distinct account of each would be very disgusting, from the unavoidable uniformity of every description. The history of any one of this class very much resembles that of all the rest they breathe air and water through the gills; they live by rapine, each devouring such animals as its mouth is capable of admitting; and they propagate, not by bringing forth their young alive, as in the cetaceous tribes, nor by distinct eggs, as in the generality of the cartilaginous tribes, but by spawn, or peas, as they are generally called, which they produce by hundreds of thousands. These are the leading marks that run through their whole history, and which have so much swelled books with tiresome repetition. It will be sufficient therefore to draw this numerous class into one point of view, and to mark how they differ from the former classes; and what they possess peculiarly striking, so as to distinguish them from each other. The first object that presents itself, and that by which they differ from all others, is the bones. These, when examined but slightly, appear to be entirely solid; yet, when 1 viewed more closely, every bone will be found hollow, and filled with a substance less rancid and oily than marrow. These bones are very numerous, and pointed; and, as in quadrupeds, are the props or stays to which the muscles are fixed, which move the 926 20MY SPOR : 7000 different parts of the body. The number of bones in all spinous fishes of the same kind, is always the same. me. It is a vulgar way of speaking to say, that fishes are at some seasons more bony than at others; but this scarcely requires contradiction. It is true, indeed, that fish are at fatter than at others; so that some seasons much fatter than at the quantity of the flesh being diminished, and that of the bones remaining the same, they appear to increase in number, as they actually bear a greater proportion. ve the All fish of the same kind, as was said, have same number of bones: the skeleton of a fish, however irregularly the bones may fall in our way at table, has its members very regularly disposed; and every bone has its fixed place, with as much precision as we find in the orders of a regular fabric. But then spinous fish differ in the number of bones according to the species; for some have a greater number of fins by which they move in the water. The number in each is always in proportion to the number and size of these fins: for every fish has a regular apparatus of bones and muscles, by which the fins are moved; and all those fish where they are numerous or large, must, of consequence, be considerably bony. Indeed, in the larger fish, the quantity of flesh is so much, and the bones themselves are so large, that they are easily seen and separated: but in the smaller kinds with many fins, the bones are as numerous as in the great; yet being so |