MAIL-CLAD ANIMALS. 7 



old-fashioned plate-armour, a few have struck out a 

 new line in the development of a different type of 

 bony coat-of-mail. Thus the Coffer- and File-fishes 

 of the tropical seas have a protective coat of bony 

 plate-armour with a sculptured outer surface, so locked 

 together as to form a box-like structure investing the 

 entire body. Again, among the fresh-water Cat-fishes 

 there is one genus in which the body is covered with 

 a cuirass of overlapping plates formed of solid bone. 

 Perhaps, however, the most peculiar kind of armour in 



FIG. 3. The Baramunda of Queensland, showing overlapping scale-armour. 



the entire class is found among some of the well-known 

 Globe-fishes, which are likewise so remarkable for 

 their habit of inflating their bodies into a balloon-like 

 shape. In these fishes, as is shown by a preparation 

 in one of the cases already alluded to in the Natural 

 History Museum, the body is protected by a coating 

 of long spines, each of which may be as much as two 

 inches in length, and is inserted in the skin by a flat 

 and expanded plate of bone. 



As a whole, then, in spite of the exceptions last 

 mentioned, which according to the time-honoured 

 phrase only serve to prove the rule, fishes appear to 

 have come to the same conclusion as the more ad- 

 vanced divisions of the human race, that a massive 



