REMARKS 



ON THE 



ICHTHYOLOGY OF HEREFORDSHIRE, 



Read before an aggregate Meeting of the Woolhope, Malveen, and 

 CoTswoLD Natuealists' Field Clt;b,5 at Eastnor, June, 1853, by 

 Heavett Wheatlet, Esq. 



Ix a short paper of this kind, it is impossible to enter upon even 

 the briefest preliminary sketch of the Natural History of our British 

 fishes : — with a few incidental observations, therefore, on Ichthyology 

 in general, the following will be confined to the species of this 

 county — Herefordshire. 



One of the most striking curiosities of Natural History, is the 

 close approximation of a higher order, to its immediate inferior — 

 the nicely graduated degrees in the scale of being. 



In the present subject — the lowest of the vertibrates, fish — there 

 is established a clear deduction from its inferior — the highest inver- 

 tibrate class, the Cephalopodous mollusks. The lowest rank of fish, 

 the lamprey, has only a rudiraental skeleton, a sort of gelatinous 

 cord. Its affinity with the mollusk, is not only recognised in the 

 skeleton, but in the skin, which ejects an abundant secretion, when 

 the animal feels in danger ; — in the process of respiration being 

 carried on through the gill-apparatus, independent of the mouth ; — ■ 

 and from the eigbt filaments extending round the lips of some 

 species; which Professor Owen considers "to represent the eight 

 arms of one of the mollusks (Cephalopoda Dibranchiata), but 

 arrested in their developement, by reason of the preponderating size 

 of the caudal extremity of the body, which now forms the sole organ 



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