124 



Ctenoid Acanthopteres.- 



-FISHES.- 



-POLYNEMIDS. 



tioiis one weighing nearly six pounds that was obtained 

 for £4G sterling. And the consid Asinius Celer, in 

 the time of Caligula, paid upwards of £G2 for one ; on 

 which Pliny exclaims that had the prodigious Surmulkt 

 of eighty pounds, caught by Liciuius Mutiauus in the 

 Ked Sea, been taken in the vicinity of Rome, what 

 wealth the luxurious fish would have brought to the 

 captor ! At length Tiberius, in consequence of £234 

 sterling having been given for three Surmullets, made 

 a sumptuary law to repress this extravagance, and to 

 tax the provisions brought to market. 



Though the Surmullets did not improve in vivaria, 

 and bore confinement ill, the Eomans took great pains 

 to rear them ; but the mortality was so great that only 

 a few survived of several thousands put into a pond. 

 This attempt at kee[iing them was made for the pur- 

 pose of presenting them alive at banquets, and allowing 

 them to swim down rivulets made to flow under the 

 tables, or to die in glass vessels, so that the guests 

 might enjoy the play of colours exhibited by the fish 

 in the agonies of death. Nothing, says Seneca, is finer 

 than a dying Surmullet. The struggles it makes against 

 death ditl'use over the body the most brilliant rod tints, 

 which end in general paleness ; but in the:passage from 

 life to death, what beautiful shades of these two colours 

 are displayed ! Apicius prepared a garum from the 

 livers of Surmullets, in which he drowned the fish pre- 

 sented alive on his table, and then sent it to be cooked. 



Family V.— rOLYNEMIDS. 



The PohjncrniJcc, equivalent to the Pulyncmini of 

 Bonaparte, are a group of Acanthopteres, with ventrals 

 situated on the belly, but attached to the scapulo-cora- 

 ooid arch by long i)ubic bones. The principal genus 

 consists of the Paradise-fishes — so named because the 

 under pectoral raj's are detached from the rest iu form 

 of tapering threads, which are as long or longer tlian 

 the lihh itself, and, together with the brilliant colours, 

 produce a i\rucied likeness to the bird of paradise. The 

 family name, of Greek derivation, meaning " many 

 threads," has reference to these elongated pectoral rays. 

 The two dorsals are far apart — the second one opposed 

 to the anal being also at some distance from the caudal. 

 The ctenoid scales are feebly ciliated, and extend to 

 the head much reduced in size ; the vertical fins also 

 are scaly ; with the exception of some serratures on 

 the preoperoulura there is no armature on the bones of 

 the bead. The stomach has an obtuse sac-like pro- 

 jection below the pylorus. The air-bladder in some 

 species is fringed by many projections ; iu others it is 

 wanting. Gill-openings wide. Branchiostegals six. 

 Pciduncmus aud Galcokks are subordinate groujjs of 

 the Paradise-fishes. 



Some of the Polynemes are highly valued as articles 

 of food, and among others the Salanghi or Salliuh 

 (Pohjncmus tdradacttjlua), which inhabits the Bay of 

 Bengal and the coasts of the Malayan peninsula. The 

 Sde, or Ilankuroio {PuhjJicmus indicus), also a fre- 

 quent fish among the Malay islands, has a large 

 thick-skiuned, silvery air-bladder, with about tliirty or 

 thirty-six appendages. One of these organs taken from 

 a fish of from four to six pounds, weighs, when diiod 



and ready for market, two ounces, and is considered to 

 be good isinglass, worth from twenty-five to thirty 

 Spanish dollars per pikul. Under the name of Loo-pii 

 the Chinese traders collect these air-bladders from 

 various parts of the Indian peninsula and JMalay archi- 

 pelago, to sell in their native country ; and the trade 

 yields a quick return and good profit. Among the 

 European merchants the article is named indifferently 

 isinglass or fish-maws, and is the produce not only of 

 the Sele, but of fish of other famihes; Dr. Cantor, 

 from whom these facts are obtained, enumerates the 

 following species as yielding fish-maws of good qualify : 

 ■ — Lates heptadactylus ; Puhjnrmus Indicus; Otolithus 

 hiauritus, rtihcr, argentnis, macidatus; Johnivs dlacan- 

 thtis; Lohotes erate; Arius Iruncatus; and A. militaris. 

 In the course of ten years the export of fish-maws 

 from Penang alone, amounted in value to nearly seventy- 

 four thousand dollars. Crawfurd says that the price 

 of fish-maws at Bombay is sometimes £14 per hun- 

 dredweight ; and that the exports from that Presidency 

 vary from one thousand five hundred to two thousand 

 five hundred hundredweight. Bengal exports about 

 four thousand pounds, and Madras filty hundredweight. 



FA.MILY VI.— CIRRniTIDS {Chrldtida:). 



The Gurnards, and some other members of the 

 Sclerogenid fiiraily, have the under rays of the pectorals 

 detached from the rest, and organized like tapering, 

 slender, flexible-jointed fingers, for examining the bot- 

 tom of the sea by touch. Other fishes have sensitive 

 tips to some pectoral rays not detached from the rest, 

 but probably serving to direct the motions of the animal 

 along an uneven bottom, where the eyes being on the 

 upper aspect of the head, need such aid. A similar 

 function is, perhaps, performed by the mandibular bar- 

 bels of the Surmullets, and the long, thread-like pectoral 

 rays of the Polynemids. The Cirr/iitidu: are connected 

 with these groups, by some of the rays of the pectorals 

 having simple tapering tips extending beyond the mem- 

 brane. They are Acanthopteres, with a depression at 

 the junction of the spinous and articulated portions ot 

 the dorsal, which in some amounts to a complete sepa- 

 ration into two dorsals. The ventrals of one spine 

 and five branching rays are situated behind the pec- 

 torals, but their pubic bones stretch forward to the 

 coracoids. Sometimes the preoperculum is serrated 

 on the edge, more generally it is entire and smooth ; 

 and the operculum has often two thin, flat, bony angles, 

 but is not armed with strong spines. The jaws are 

 formed like those of the Percoids or Scioenoids, with 

 terminal mouths, but are in general more protractile. 

 Sometimes there is a cluster of teeth on the vomer, 

 but none exist on the palatines. The scales are in 

 some cycloid and smooth ; in others, striated on the 

 edges, or ciliated. The stomach is cffical, and rather 

 small ; the pyloric creca are few in number, seldom 

 exceeding four ; and the air-bladder is simple, or wholly 

 absent. 



The genera are — Cirrhlies; Ciri-MHchys (BhQVor) ; Oxydr- 

 r/iifes (id.); ChiroTiemvs; ChUodaciylus] Nemadactyhis; Latris; 

 Mendosoma (Gay) ; and Aplodaciyliis, or Haidoductylus. 



