274 



ICHTHYOLOGY. 



Classifica- 

 tion — 



Acanthop- 

 terous 

 Fishes. 



TABLE OP GENERA. 



Two dorsaUf or one dorsal notched to its base. 

 All the teeth villiform. 



Perca, Lates, Enoplosus, Diploi-rion, Niphon, 

 Labrax, Centropomus, Hdeon, Geammistes, 

 AspRo, Ambassis, Apogon, Cnidon, Psammo- 



PERCA, PRIOPIS, MiCROiCHTHYS, BoGODA, POMA- 



TOMUS. 



Canine teeth among the others. 



Cheilodipterus, Lucioperca, Etelis. 

 A single dorsal. 



Canine teeth among the others. 



SERRANUS, PLECTROPO.MA, DiACOPE, MeSOPRION, AP- 



RION. 

 Teeth all villiform. 



Centropristes, Grystes, Polyprion, Pentaceros, 



AcERiNA, Khypticds, Aulacocephalds, Apsilus, 



Glaucosoma. 



Fig. 92. 

 Perca fiuviatilis. 



The common Perch (Perca JJuviatilis, Linn.), one of 

 the most beautiful of tlie fresh-water fishes of Europe, is too 

 familiarly known to require description. It inhabits both 

 lakes and rivers, but sliuns salt water. As an article of 

 food it is still in some estimation, although the character 

 o-iven of it in that respect by Ausonius is higher than ac- 

 cords with modern views. The female deposits her ova, 

 united together by a viscid matter, in lengthened strings, 

 a peculiarity noted by Aristotle. The number of these 

 e<i-o-s sometimes amounts to nearly a million. The Perch 

 occurs over all Europe, and most of the northern districts 

 of Asia. Pennant alludes to one said to have been taken in 

 the Serpentine River, in Hyde Park, which weighed nine 

 pounds. But even one half of that weight would be re- 

 garded as extraordinary, and Pennant reports the fact on 

 the authority of another. 



Fig. 93. 

 Labrax lupus. 



The fish here represented is the Labrax lupus, Basse or 

 Sea Perch, a fish of a chaste and pleasing aspect, though 

 destitute of the more strongly contrasted colours of tlie 

 fresh-water species. Its upper parts are gray, with bluish 

 reflections, which gradually shade away into a silvery 

 whiteness on the under surface. Tiie pectoral fins are 

 slightly tinged with red. It occurs along the Dutch and 

 British shores, but is much more abundant in the Mediter- 

 ranean. It is a voracious fish with a remarkably large 

 stomach, and received from the ancient Romans the appro- 

 priate cognomen of lupus. By the Greeks it was highly 

 esteemed : Archestratus, even termed a large kind taken 

 near Milet, "offspring of the gods." They attributed to 



the lupus a tender regard for its own safety ; and Aristotle Classifica- 

 says that it is the most cunning of fishes, and that when tion — 

 surrounded by a net it digs for itself a channel of escape Acanthop- 



through the sand. *<"'°"« 



° Fishes. 



" Clausus rete lupus quamvis immanis et acer ^ , 



Dimotis Cauda submissus sidit arenis, ^ v 



Atque ubi jam transire plagas persentit in auras 

 Emicat atque dolos saltu diludit inultus." — OviD. 



The Basse sometimes attains the length of 3 feet, though 

 it is seldom met with much above half that size. 



There is little that calls for attention from the other 

 Percoids with two dorsals. Though interesting from the 

 variety of forms they display, we must leave these to be 

 studied in their leading features as given in the annexed 

 table, and give the space we can allot to species of more 

 importance, either objects of commerce or of large fisheries, 

 or from the associations connected with them. 



In the Histoire des Poissons, the Percoids with a single 

 dorsal form a second great division of the family ; and, were 

 it not for the break in the close affinities between the two 

 groups that would be caused by making tiiis division a 

 separate family, the number of species that it contains might 

 render such a proceeding expedient as a mere matter of 

 convenience. Cuvier remarks that the Percoids, in which 

 the spinous portion of tiie dorsal is connected with the soft 

 one by a sufficiently even border, is much more numerous 

 in species than the typical division with two dorsals ; and 

 he found it necessary, therefore, in arranging them, to have 

 recourse to characters of a sufficiently minute kind. Bloch 

 drew his from the denticulations of the preoperculum and 

 the spines of the operculum ; but he has frequently used 

 them without judgment, and we frequently meet in his ar- 

 rangement with Labroidand Sciasnoid fishes stuck in among 

 the Percoids. The same errors exist, in greater or smaller 

 numbers, in the works of his successors, because they at- 

 tended more than they ought to have done to external 

 characters, passing over the more essential conformities of 

 internal structure. " Our(Cuvier's) precautions in separating 

 fish whose teeth are supported by different parts of the 

 mouth have saved us from much of this confusion, but yet 

 there remained a considerable number of species w hich we 

 could divide into groups only by employing subordinate cha- 

 racters. We characterized the primary divisions by the teeth, 

 which in some are villiform and of even height, as in Perca 

 and Labrax ; sometimes interspersed with canines, or teeth 

 a little higher and more pointed than the rest of the villi- 

 form band. Next we looked to the operculum, the edge 

 of whose bony piece is sometimes smooth or rounded, some- 

 times terminated by two or three points more or less acute. 

 Next we attended to the preoperculum, whose edges may 

 be either smooth or denticulated, or armed in various ways 

 with spines. Lastly, the bones of the jaws, smooth or scaly, 

 furnish the final subdivisions ; and to distinguish certain 

 genera, we take characters from striking configurations ot 

 other parts of the fish." These are tlie rules which the 

 greatest of ichthyologists, whether ancient or modern, framed 

 for his guidance in the distribution of this portion of the 

 finny tribes. Since his labours were brought to a close 

 many new species have been discovered, and not a kw new 

 forms described ; and we have therefore, as intimated above, 

 relieved the overloaded Percoid group by removing some 

 of the minor assemblages made by Cuvier himself, and 

 placing tliem under distinct family appellations. It must 

 be kept in mind, however, that the great mass oiAca/it/iop- 

 tert, though exceedingly numerous in species, and present- 

 ing a gi-eat variety of generic forms, vary very little in the 

 more essential parts of structure ; and that the subdivisions 

 which their numbers have made necessary are not of the 

 sama value in the animal scale as others containing per- 

 haps only one or two species in other parts of the table. 



The Serrani, called also Sea Perches, are numerous, 



