172 TELEOSTOMES 
In South America the catfish is a regnant type, and is 
remarkable for the variety as well as for the number and 
size of its forms. Many, completely armoured (Fig. 178), 
are strongly suggestive of Ganoids. Their armouring is 
My f | peel 
Fig. 178.— South American Siluroid, Cadlichthys armatus. X1. (After 
GUNTHER.) Upper Amazon. 
metameral and archaic, their sensory canals primitive in 
structure and arrangement. 
Mormyrus, \ike the catfish, appears to have long been 
divergent from the main stem of the Teleosts. Its species 
et 
sk 
Fig. 179. — Mormyrus oxyrhynchus. X%. (After GUNTHER.) Nile. 
are restricted to the Nile, one — the long-nosed MW. oxyrhyn- 
chus (Fig. 179) — figuring prominently in Egyptian myth. 
In many of its structures it is archaic, as in axial skeleton, 
fins, dermal characters, sensory canals ; in others, e.g. hear- 
