238 INDIAN CYPRINID. 
supersede the use of wings. It may be thought difficult to find among 
fishes a terrestrial type; but as water is the natural element of this class, 
so the ocean is its metropolis; and those kinds that are confined to rivers 
and the interior of continents may be safely looked upon as more terrestrial 
than the rest, and consequently so far equivalent in their habits to rasorial 
birds ; and, while there is no instance of rasorial birds possessed of aquatic 
habits, or, as Swainson observes, “ frequenting water or even its vicinity,”* 
so no species of Cyprinide is known to belong to the sea. In India the 
Cyprinide are exclusively confined to fresh water, mostly keeping beyond 
the influence of the tides, thus evincing a propensity for land analogous 
to that of Rasores. 
35. There is perhaps no point better settled in comparative anatomya 
than that the pectorals of fishes represent the upper extremities of the 
higher classes of animals; short pectorals may therefore be said to be equi- 
valent to short wings in birds; but it is a question of much interest to 
determine fully how this applies to the case before us, and if it is to be 
relied upon as a true analogy. 
In the Frog and several reptiles the scapula has been found by Cuvier 
and Geoffrey to be composed of two osseous pieces, agreeing with the two 
upper bones of the posterior frame or jamb of the branchial aperture in 
fishes, and a third or lower bone assists in forming a girdle to which the 
pectoral fins are fixed in St/uride and most fishes of the same order, with 
the exception of the Cyprinide, and particularly the herbivorous section of 
the family (Peonomine). These bones were found by the most. satis- 
factory analysis to represent the humerus, or bone which gives support 
to the third row of quill feathers in birds. Below this bone there is a stylet, 
which in Cyprins zs merely rudimental. It was found by Cuvier to represent 
* Geog. Dist. and Class. of Animals, p. 259. 
