FISHES. 325 
have only three bones which are able to bear teeth, but fish 
have eight. Their teeth vary in form ; generally they are conical 
and pointed, sometimes they are depressed and flat. The 
members of the ray family have their mouths furnished with 
small ivory plates which are arranged like tesselated pavement. 
Some teeth are long and curved, indeed more like hooks than 
teeth. Perhaps of all the sea monsters the Sea-wolf, which 
frequents the northern seas, has the most formidable dental array. 
It has two kinds of teeth—incisors which are triangular and 
serrated upon their edges, and flat grinders. Steller recounts an 
adventure with a sea-wolf off the coast of Kamtschatka, in which 
he says that the creature seized an iron lever between its jaws, and 
snapped it like a rod of glass. Schoenfeld assures us that the wolves 
can even leave the mark of their teeth upon the anchors. It is 
said, but we have no absolutely authentic account, that there is 
a fish in the southern seas which can browse upon the stony coral 
stems as a cow crops the meadow grass. We know that some fish 
have so many teeth, that they are so close together, that to the 
touch of the finger the mouth seems lined with velvet. 
The respiratory organs, or branchiz, exhibit very varied orga- 
nisations. They are generally filaments, or little tubes, fixed in 
parallel series to a kind of bony arch, and so forming a species 
of fringe. In the Sea-pipe (Syugnathus acus) and in the Sea- 
horse (Hippocampus) the branchiz rise in tufts. 
The continued movements of the mouth and gills have induced 
the popular idea that fish are constantly drinking water, hence 
the proverb, “To drink like a fish.” This notion is, however, 
erroneous, for the fish is not employed in drinking water, but in 
breathing the air the water contains. The gills are apparatus 
fitted for the separation of the small quantity of air the water 
holds in solution from its liquid solvent. The truth of this is 
easily proved. If gold and silver fish be placed in water which 
has been boiled, and which therefore is not aerated, the suffocating 
creatures come up to the surface of the water, finding that there 
the liquid contains some little air. 
It is the general notion that fish have no means of making any 
sounds. This is not strictly true; though the most of them are 
