ICHTHYOLOGY. 



311 



Classifica- CcEca. In quoting these remarks from Cuvier, M. Valen- 

 tion — ciennes adds that Loph'ms nevertheless has two pancreatic 



Acanthop- ^^g^..^ ^^^^ jj^g pylorus, and shows some relationsliip to the 

 Fishes. Percoids, from which, however, he gatiiers that in natural 



\. J ■ families there are analogous repetitions or representations 



of genera in the several gron|is. Many wonderful things 

 have been said of Lopliius, or the Fishing-Frog. It has 

 arts and schemes strange and various ; it fishes with a 

 line ; it fishes with a bait ; and not content with gather- 

 ing a crowd of fish around it by the temptation of its baited 

 filaments, it engulfs them in its vast branchial bags, which 

 sacs, sustained by branchiostegals of proportional size, 

 have no opercular bones, so that, in short, the Lophius is 

 an isolated genus, ditfeiing from all others in organs con- 

 nected with its resjiiration. But in truth the Lophius pos- 

 sesses exactly the same bones which enter into the compo- 

 sition of these parts in other fishes ; the proportion alone 

 differs, and the enormously large head has given rise to 

 much of the marvellous in these descriptions. The organ 

 of smell is that in which the Lophius differs most from 

 other fishes, whether they are osseous or cartilaginous. It 

 has two orifices to its nostril, as is usual, but they are not 

 easily found, \mless sought for at the extremity of the nos- 

 tril tube in an uninjured specimen. This organ is sup- 

 ported on a membranous stalk, and when one opens its 

 summit, it spreads out like the cup of a flower. The bot- 

 tom of this cup is divided into projecting leaflets, on which 

 the olfactory nerve is distributed, after traversing the axis 

 of the foot-stalk. The fish erects these stilted nostrils, and 

 turns them towards any object wliose odour it wishes to 

 ascertain, much as a Slug elongates its horns. In fishes in 

 general the plaited pituitary membrane is fixed immoveably 

 at the bottom of a cavity excavated in the bone. The oper- 

 cular bone in this fish is long and strong, is suspended 

 vertically fi-om the convex epitympanic condyle (as '\v\Diodon 

 and Ariguilla), and has a long slender fin-ray proceeding 

 from the back part of the joint. The subopercidimi is pro- 

 duced backwards, and is divided into slender branches to- 

 wards its border-like fin-rays, as in the Plagiostomes. The 

 anterior rays of the dorsal situated on the head are articulated 

 at their bases by rings, as represented by Mr Yarrell. The 

 spine is composed of thirty vertebra:, and the myelon ter- 

 minates in a point at the twelfth, the rest of the neural 

 canal being occupied by a long cauda equina, or bundle 

 of nerves. Except in the Lophobranchs, there is scarcely 

 another instance among fishes of a similar structure, the 

 myelon being generally co-extensive with the neural canal. 

 The Lophius piscalorius is common on the S. coast of 

 England, and many are taken annually in Portsmouth Har- 

 bour. A second species is supposed to exist in the Euro- 

 pean seas, and a very similar one abounds in the China seas. 

 Specimens of the young are generally pinned in along 

 with other small fishes in the insect-boxes exported from 

 Canton. The Cheironectes are small fishes, of frog-like 

 aspect, and many of them have the faculty of distending 

 their large membranous stomach with air, and so swelling 

 out the body as the Tetraodons and Diodons do. The qua*^ 

 drupedal character which these fishes |)ossess from the posi- 

 tion of their pectoral and ventral fins is expressed by fig. 

 1, p. 206. The small hole in the axilla of the pectoral is 

 the only gill-opening, and this structure, by retaining the 

 moisture about their gills, enables these fish to remain long 

 out of water, and to travel over sea-weed and sand in search 

 of prey. Commerson considered them to be a kind of Am- 

 phibia. Many are curiously coloured, and have strange 

 cutaneous appendages to the fins and other parts of the 

 body. 



Multhcea is a genus of fish of depressed forms, very wide 

 in the pectoral region, and they are remarkable as being 

 the only fishes of this family which possess a suhorbitar bone. 

 Halieutea is still more depressed in the body than Malthaa, 



and dried specimens are very common in the Chinese in- 

 sect-boxes. The species named H. stellata, is of an 

 aurora-red colour above, and bright lake-red beneath. Its 

 back is curiously muricated. 



Batrachus is a genus of small fishes, of a disagreeable 

 aspect, but which departs less from the ordinary piscine 

 types in outward form than the jneceding Lophioids. It 

 lias much the aspect of some Cotti, to which the armature 

 of its head bears also a resemblance. It differs, however, 

 widely from the SclerogenidcB, in the cheek not only being 

 not cuirassed by the suborbitar, but in that bone being 

 altogether absent. The suboperculum is as large as the 

 operculum, and is likewise armed with strong spines. The 

 species are divided according to the naked or scaly condi- 

 tion of their skin, and by the presence or absence of bar- 

 bels round the jaws. 



Classifica- 

 tion — 



Acantliop- 

 terous 

 Pishes. 



Fig. 132. 

 Botrachius dubius. 



Family XXIV.— LOPHIIDvE, Cuv. 



Pectorales pcdimlees, Cuv. Armflosser of the Germans. Slcele- 

 ton fibrous, rarely much indurated. Scales almost always wanting, 

 replaced in MaUhcpa by osseous tubercli-s, and in many Cheironectes 

 by small grains which support spines. Forearm, that is the ulna 

 and radius supporting the pectoral fin, prolonged, making a kind of 

 arm. Gill-openings restricted to a round hole or vertical slit be- 

 hind the pectoral, and not extending under the border of the sub- 

 operculum and operculum. No suborbitar bones. 



Genus I. IjOphius. Head, in comparison with the rest of the 

 body, excessively large, broad, depressed, spiniferous. Infundibuli- 

 form pedicellated nostrils. Very wide mouth. Conical slender teeth 

 on the jaws, palatines, and most frequently on the chevron of the 

 vomer, on the superior and inferior pharyngeals, but not on the 

 tongue. Branchiostegals six ; branchiostegal membrane very exten- 

 sive; branchial arches three only. No supplementary gill adhering to 

 the operculum. The operculum, suboperculum, and interoperculum 

 concealed by the muscles, but the preoperculum more visible. There 

 is no suborbitar. Teeth moveable. Dorsals two, some of the rays 

 of the first one far forwards on the head, detached from the others, 

 produced into tall filaments which carry a cutaneous tag at their 

 extremity ; these rays are articulated by a ring to their interneural 

 bones, a mode of articulation which exists also in the C'hmtodontidce, 

 SUurid<E, and some Cy}yrini. Nosti-ilscarapanulate and pedunculate. 

 Stomach very large and very muscular ; intestine short; two pan- 

 creatic ca3ca. Five species. 



Genus II. Chrironectes, Cuv. Head and body vertically com- 

 pressed. Three free rays on the head, sometimes united by mem- 

 brane, but not followed by a spinous fin separated from the soft dor- 

 sal as in Lojyhiuif. Head neither very large nor the gape so enormous 

 as in that genus. Most have the power of inflating the body by filling 

 a large membranous stomach with air like a Tetraodon or Diodon. 

 The relative position of their ventrals and pectorals gives them the 

 appearanceof possessing four feet (see fig. l,p 206), but it is the ven- 

 trals that here represent the anterior limbs. Gill-opening a small 

 hole concealed in the axilla of the pectoral. Mouth cleft more or less 

 vertically. Fine slender and pointed teeth crowded in card-like 

 plates on the premaxillaries. mandible, vomer, palatines, and pha- 

 ryngeals. Eyes small and far forward. Opercular bones wholly 

 concealed by the integuments. Branchiostegals six. Branchial 

 arches four. Body not tapering posteriorly in the same way with 

 that of Lophius. Dorsal occupying much of the back ; pectoral 



