SPINOUS FISHES. 289 



aniine its ventral or belly fins, and finding that the fish has them, I 

 look for their situation, and find they lie nearer to the tail than the 

 pectoral fins. By this I find the animal to be a soft-finned abdominal 

 fish. Then to know which of the kinds of these fishes it is, I exa- 

 mine its figure and the shape of its head, I find the body rather ob- 

 Jong ; the head with a small beak ; the lower jaw like a saw ; the fin 

 covering the gills with eight rays. This animal must therefore be the 

 herring, or one of that family, such as the pilchard, the sprat, the 

 shad, or the anchovy. To give another instance : Upon examining 

 the fins of a fish to me unknown, I find them prickly; I then look 

 for the situation of the ventral fins, I find them entirely wanting; 

 this then must be a prickly-finned apodal fish. Of this kind there 

 are but three ; and by comparing the fish with the description, I find 

 it either of the trichurus kind, the sword-fish, or the gilt-head. Upon 

 examining also its internal structure, I shall find a very great simili- 

 tude between my fish and that placed at the head of the family. 



CHAPTER II. 



OF SPINOUS FISHES IN GENERAL. 



HAVING given a method by which Spinous Fishes may be distin- 

 guished from each other, the history of each in particular might na 

 turally be expected to follow ; but such a distinct account of each 

 would be very disgusting, from the unavoidable uniformity of every 

 description. The history of any one of this class very much resem- 

 bles that of all the rest : they breathe air and water through the gills ; 

 they live by rapine, each devouring such animals as its mouth is ca- 

 pable of admitting ; and they propagate, not by bringing forth their 

 young alive, as in the cetaceous tribes, nor by distinct eggs, as in the 

 generality of the cartilaginous tribes, but by spawn, or peas, as they 

 are generally called, which they produce by hundreds of thousands. 

 These are the leading marks that run through their whole history, and 

 which have so much swelled books with tiresome repetition. 



It will be sufficient therefore to draw this numerous class into one 

 point of view, and to mark how they differ from the former classes ; 

 and what they possess peculiarly striking, so as to distinguish them 

 from each other. The first object that presents itself, and that by 

 which they differ from all others, is the bones. These, when exa- 

 mined but slightly, appear to be entirely solid ; yet, when viewed 

 more closely, every bone would be found hollow, and filled with a 

 substance less rancid and oily than marrow. These bones are very 

 numerous, and pointed ; and, as in quadrupeds, are props or stays to 

 which the muscles are fixed which move the different parts of the body 



The number of bones in all spinous fishes of the same kind, is al- 

 ways the same It is a vulgar way of speaKing to say, that fishes JUTO 



