INSTRUCTION. 7 



can always teach another something, the writer feels 

 impelled to mingle a little instruction in doses to suit 

 the weakest stomach, that those who have not skipped 

 this chapter on account of its title, may at least receive 

 something for their perseverance. They need not sup- 

 pose for a moment that the writer pretends to insist upon 

 what he shall write as infallible, but where his readers 

 differ from him, is perfectly willing to admit that he is 

 entirely mistaken ; the buyer of a book is always right, 

 the author a toujours tort. 



He supposes let there be no misunderstandings when 

 he accidentally uses a stronger word that fishes are 

 divided into two great orders, and are distinguished as 

 having bony or cartilaginous skeletons ; thus a quawl, 

 provided he be a fish at all, would be a very cartilagi- 

 nous one, and a catfish with his back fin erected, as the 

 writer has often learned to his cost, is a bony fish. 



As the cartilaginous fish are of small account, the 

 reader may forget all about them if he wishes, but he is 

 requested to remember the useful division of those hav- 

 ing bony skeletons into the great classes, easily distin- 

 guished, of the soft finned and spiny finned, called in 

 foreign languages by the horrible terms malacopterygii 

 and acanthopterygii terms unpronounceable except by a 

 Dutchman or a philosopher. These classes are distin- 

 guished, as the English words imply, by their having the 

 rays of their fins soft and flexible or hard and spine-like. 

 The investigator may determine their peculiarities by 

 pressing strongly upon the points of the fin rays ; if 

 nature intimates that his organism is suffering, the fish is 

 a acanthop, etc. ; if not, why not. 



