38(5 FISHES. 



and it is to this circumstance, in all probability, that we must refer, 

 also, the slight motion that is left to their branchial apparatus by the 

 skin that narrowly covers it, and which has been the impediment that 

 prevented many naturalists from seeing it, as it was furnished with 

 opercula and rays, as all other fishes. 



But these families, once separated, nine-tenths of the fishes remain, 

 amongst which the leading distinction that offers itself in fishes with 

 soft fins, or whose rays are branched and articulated, and fishes with 

 spinous fins, a portion of the rays of which are pointed small bones, 

 without branches or articulations, or, as Artedi cnlled them, the 

 branches of malacopterygians and acanthopterygian fishes. Unfortu- 

 nately this division is still very general, and to make any application of 

 it we are forced to abstract the first rays of the dorsal, or of the 

 pectorals in certain cyprins and silures, in which those rays present 

 strong and solid spines. It is true that these spines are formed of two 

 kinds by the agglutination of a multitude of small articulations, of 

 which the vestiges may be detected in them. 



There are still some exceptions in respect of certain fishes of the 

 family of lobrus, and for others of that of the blennies, the spines of 

 which are so small or so weak, or so few, that they do not seem to 

 have any; but, with the exception of those little irregularities, were 

 this division to be brought out not very far, at least it would not 

 separate any fishes which nature had brought together. 



J»ut, as much cannot be said of the distinctions sought to be esta- 

 blished by naturalists on other principles, nor of the subdivisions 

 which they, who have adopted the great division according to the 

 Spines, have endeavoured to introduce into the two branches. 



Thus, the general form of the body and the absence of ventrals used 

 by Ray, before the character deduced from the spines obliged him to 

 place together the eel, and lote, and goby, the syngnathes, sword fish, 

 and mow fish. 



Linnaeus was the first, in his tenth edition, to neglect the distinction 

 which was established by the spines. He thought of dividing the 

 ordinary fishes into apodes, jugular, thoracic and abdominal, accord- 

 ing as they want the ventrals, or that there are attached before the 

 pectoral fins or under them, or more backwards, he saw himself 

 obliged to approach the sword fish, the trichiures, and the eel, and 

 gynnotus, placing the cods between the vives and blennies, the plcu- 

 rowcles between zeus and the ehectodons, and the teuthis or ampha- 

 canthes between the silurus and lori caria. 



Gouan, in combining these two methods, and dividing each into 

 the branches of Artedi, according to the four orders of Linna?us, 

 avoided some approximations that would have been very unnatural, 

 and yet he placed the sword fish and the trichumes very far from the 

 scombrcs : he committed positive errors, also, in making the don- 

 zcllc and silurus, acanthopterygians and stromateus a malacoptcry- 

 gian. 



M. de Lacepede resumes the characters of Pennant, and divides 

 the fishes into the osseous and the cartilaginous; each of these classes 

 he subdivides without respect to the fins, and with regard to the 

 absence or presence, either of the operculum or of the branchistegal 



