onwards, to enable fishes to endure, without in- 

 convenience, the long abstinence to which they 

 are sometimes subjected. The perch, according 

 to Sir Everard Home, takes food only once a 

 fortnight. The liver is in general very large in 

 fishes ; but many of them, as the perch, the lam- 

 prey and the lump, have no gall-bladder, or dis- 

 tinct receptacle of bile, before it is carried from 

 the liver to the intestines. The whole intestinal 

 canal is, in general, much shorter in fishes than 

 in other animals, being sometimes not longer 

 than their body ; whereas, in most reptiles, ex- 

 cept serpents, in birds and in quadrupeds, it is 

 from three to thirty times that length a provi- 

 sion unnecessary in fishes, perhaps from the mat- 

 ters on which they for the most part subsist being 

 already almost of the same nature as their own 

 bodies, and, therefore, requiring comparatively 

 little preparation. 



The gullet of some reptiles, as serpents, is 

 equally wide, and even wider than that of fishes, 

 this organ and the stomach being frequently al- 

 most of the same calibre, and together perform- 

 ing apparently one common function that of 

 digestion, whereas, in most other animals, the 

 gullet is merely the passage for transmitting the 

 alimentary matters to the receptacle in which 

 they are to undergo that change. It is well 

 known that most serpents, after having bruised 

 their prey, and smeared the surface with their 

 saliva, devour the carcass whole ; and the cele- 

 brated naturalist Spallanzani, not unfrequently 



