ANGLING. 



Fishes being without a neck, and the portion 

 called the tail being usually equal at its origin to 

 the part of the body from which it springs, the 

 prevailing shape is somewhat uniform and con- 

 tinuous, diminishing gradually towards either ex- 

 tremity. Of this, the most elegant and charac- 

 teristic form of fishes, the salmon and mackerel 

 exhibit familiar examples. Yet a vast variety of 

 shape, as well as of size and colour, is naturally 

 presented by a class which now contains some 

 seven or eight thousand known species; and no 

 further illustration of the subject will be deemed 

 necessary by him who has seen and remembers the 

 difference between an eel and a skate. 



The mouth of fishes either opens from beneath, 

 as in the rays, or at the extremity of the muzzle, 

 as in the great majority of species, or from the 

 upper surface, as in a small foreign group called 

 Uranoscopus, or moon-gazer, an odd name for 

 species, some of which have been alleged to bury 

 themselves to the depth of twenty feet in sand, 

 a bed not easily obtained, and in no way fitted for 

 astronomical observation. It also varies much in 

 its relative dimensions, from the minute perforation 

 of the genus Centriscus, to the vast expanded gape 

 of the ugly angler-fish. We mean nothing per- 

 sonal in the last allusion. 



The teeth of fisheS are frequently very numerous, 

 and are sometimes spread over all the bony parts of 

 the interior cavity of the mouth and pharynx, that 

 is, on the maxillary, inter-maxillary and palatal 

 bones, on the vomer, tongue, branchial arches, and 



