ZOOLOGY. 629 



angles of the mouth; then the chin and the nasal barbels make their 

 appearance. All but the nasal barbels, upon examination with the 

 microtome, are found to contain a cartilaginous suj^porting axis. 



The yelk is very coarsely granular and is composed of spheroidal 

 bodies which are more or less misshapen by mutual i^ressure. At the 

 end of about two weeks the yelk-bag becomes outwardly imperceptible. 

 The pecnliarly wide or extended cerebellum of these fishes begins to be 

 apparent at a very early stage in the embryo. The segmentation is 

 meroblastic, a very sharply defined germinal disk being formed. The 

 way in which the embryos swing their tails back and forth within the 

 egg on the second and third days reminds one forcibly of this habit in 

 an angry cat, and is worthy of note on account of the name of this 

 group, viz, the Catfishes. 



The young, after hatching, cluster together and seem to follow the 

 male parent. When feeding upon chopped meat the yonng were fre- 

 quently taken into the mouth of the male parent, who would, however, 

 always reject his progeny alive and unharmed from his mouth before 

 swallowing, showing that he was able to discriminate between his young 

 and his food. {Bull. U. S. Fish Com., in, i)p. 225-230.) 



The Saccopharyvgidce relatives of the Uurypharyngidw. — In the search 

 for relations of the strange Eurypharyngidse, Messrs. Gill and Ryder 

 became convinced that the genus ^accopharynx, jiroposed in 1824 by 

 Mitchill, and the Ophiognathus, named three years later by Harwood 

 (1827), were closely related, and consequently the family embracing the 

 two has been approximated to the Eurypharyngidse as a related type. 

 Some modifications were also found to be necessary in the diagnosis of 

 the ordinal group. The Lyomeri are now distinguishable as Teleost 

 fishes with five branchial arches, none of which are modified as branchi- 

 ostegal or pharyngeal, far behind the skull; an imperfectly ossified 

 cranium, deficient especially in nasal and vomerine elements, articulat- 

 ing with the first vertebra by a basiocipital condyle alone ; with only 

 two cephalic arches, both freely movable, (1) an anterioi' dentigerous 

 one (the supramaxillary) and (2) the suspensorial, consisting of only 

 hyomandibular and quadrate bones ; without opercular elements ; with- 

 out palatine or pterygoid bones; with the scapular arch imperfect, lim- 

 ited to a simple cartilaginous piece, remote from the skull ; with the rays 

 of the pectorals sessile directly upon them, and with separately ossified 

 but imperfect vertebrae. 



A peculiar type of Fishes. — Over 100 years ago (in 1781) a very curious 

 fish was described by the German naturalist, Hermann, under the name 

 Sternoptyx, but the old naturalist was deceived by ap])earances and 

 quite misunderstood the structure and relation of the species. Al- 

 though its anatomy has been worked at, its peculiarities have not been 

 appreciated. Attracted by certain appearances. Professor Gill ex- 

 amined the skeleton and found that it exhibited differences of such a 



