ODD FORMS AMONG FISHES. 525 



ODD FOKMS AMONG FISHES. 



By Professor SANBOKN TENNEY. 



PROBABLY there is no group of animals certainly no group of 

 vertebrates tliat exbibits more strange and even monstrous 

 forms than fishes. 



The typical fish, we may well believe, is some such form as the 

 salmon, or the cod, or the bass, or an average of these and their nu- 

 merous allies. In a word, the ordinary fishes of the ocean, lakes, and 

 streams, give us essentially the true idea of the typical fish. 



But what remarkable departures from these ordinary forms do we 



Fig. 1. Salmon, introduced here as an example of a typical fish. 



find when we take a survey of the whole vast group of animals that 

 are called fishes ! 



Let us take the salmon as a fair sample of an ordinary fish, and 

 then briefly notice a few of the strange forms to which the name is ap- 

 plied. 



If we look at the rays (Fig, 2), we see "fishes" whose width is so 

 great in proportion to their length, that in giving their dimensions it 

 would seem to be quite the natural thing to put down the loidth as the 

 prominent measurement instead of the length, as is our custom in the 

 case of ordinary fishes. And it may be remarked here that the great 

 relative breadth of these animals is connected with the kind of move- 

 ments which they exhibit in progression. Instead of ordinary swim- 

 ming, these animals eflect locomotion by a sort of flight through the 

 waters; and hence are often called "sea-eagles," "sea-vampires," etc. 

 They all belong to the sea. Some of the rays are of wonderful dimen- 

 sions, although the ordinary kinds are only about two or three feet 

 wide. One was taken near Messina which weighed half a ton. One 

 taken near Barbadoes is said to have been so large that it required 

 seven yoke of oxen to draw it ! Levaillant tells us of one which was 

 thirty feet wide and twenty-five feet long ; and Dekay states that 

 one of these monsters of the deep has been known to seize the cable 

 of a small vessel at anchor, and draw it several miles with great 

 velocity ! 



