FISHES. 383 



ever in these pretended analogies which can be at all relied on, as 

 results of so very painful an investigation. 



Let vis imagine the case of a spinous apophysis, which is detached 

 from a vertebra, and that half of it is lifted above the other ; let us 

 concede even that, under such circumstances, nature forms a different 

 model of the pieces, and makes this articulation so complicated as 

 that it has been called an annular joint, — shall we then have procured 

 for this the interspinousof a fish and a ray of a dorsal fin articulated with 

 it ? By no means, because the interspinous itself is a compound of 

 three pieces, and the ray, though it. were ever so simple and sharp, is 

 divided, still, in a vertical direction, into two equal portions. What 

 will the consequence then be, supposing we speak of a soft ray, 

 divided, also, into a great number of branches, and into hundreds of 

 small articulations ? So far as regards the six distinct muscles for 

 each ray, the evidence of their having no analogues is such, that no 

 one could venture to assign them to it, and the same result would 

 follow, although some may say so, if a trial were undertaken for com- 

 paring the muscles of the operculum with the muscles of the small 

 bones of the ear. 



There is no question whatever as to the fact of the apparatus which 

 supports the branchiae having some relation, however remote it may 

 be, with that which supports the branchial tufts of the tadpoles, or 

 those of the sirenas and proteus. But this is a demonstration that 

 no analogues for the larynx and branchiae can exist in these animals 

 simultaneously with their branchial apparatus ; and can any one point 

 out the slightest grounds for comparing the muscles of this apparatus 

 in the two classes? 



Had nature expressly provided muscles for the reptiles, and others 

 or the fishes, why did she not make bones for each ? 



Some again affect to have found in the opercular pieces of the gills 

 of fishes, actually the bones of the ear in the mammalia; but not in 

 the shape of rudiments surely, for they are, on the other hand, enor- 

 mously developed. How, then, are we to reconcile this notion with 

 the fact that those of the reptiles which seem most to come near the class 

 of fishes, which in their first age are nearly true fishes ; that these, I 

 repeat, meaning the salamanders, and even the frogs, should be pre- 

 cisely the vertebrated animals in which the bones of the ear are 

 brought down to the very weakest and the most rudimentary condition ? 



The conclusion, therefore, to which we must come at last is this, that 

 if there be any resemblances between the organs of fishes and those of 

 the other classes, it is only because there is a corresponding resem- 

 blance in their mutual functions. We are satisfied, then, that if we 

 can consider that these animals are mollusca raised to the rank of 

 nobles, as it were, or mollusca promoted one degree, or if they are 

 the foetuses of reptiles, reptiles in the first stage of development, it 

 can only be in an abstract and metaphysical sense that we understand 

 the proposition, and that even then we are bound to require that this 

 abstract expression should afford just ideas of their organization. 

 Let us, then, conclude, above all things, that they are neither links of 

 this imaginary chain of successive forms, rio one of which could have 

 been the germ of the others, since no one could have existed in an isolated 



