CLASS GANOIDEt. 



01 



barbed spines, can be suddenly lashed around an enemy, 

 the barbs frightfully lacerating the flesh.* 



FIG. 156. 



FIG. 157. 



Pns'tis an ti quo' rum. Saw-fish. 







The Saw-fish has a sword-like snout one third the 

 length of the body, and edged 

 with tooth -like spines. Bran- 

 dishing this among a school of 

 fishes, many are at once disabled, 

 and afterward eaten at leisure. 

 Though many of the Sharks and shark's E gg , attached to the stem of 

 Rays are viviparous, some are a plant. 



oviparous, their eggs resembling horn-like sacs, with 

 tendrils for clinging to the sea-weed. 



CLASS G-ANOIDEI (ga noid'e T). 



Though GANOID (ga'noid) fishes once peopled the wa- 

 ters in large numbers, they are at the present time repre- 

 sented by only a few species, all of which, with a single 

 exception, inhabit fresh-water. They differ from the 

 sharks and rays in that the body is covered with an 

 armor of regularly arranged bony plates, which on the 

 first ray of the dorsal and caudal (ka'dai) fins form ridges, 

 known as fulcra (ful'kra). Though the lower representa- 

 tives have the skeleton cartilaginous, in the higher forms 

 this support is often of a bony nature. 



* To this family belongs the famous Torpedo, which, on being touched, gives 

 a violent electric shock. It possesses a kind of voltaic pile, composed of parallel 

 prisms, 1,262 of which have been counted in a single fish. The electricity has 

 been used in galvanic experiments, as making a magnetic needle, etc. 



