296 REVIEW——-DEVELOPMENT OF THE PECTORAL FINS IN FISHES. 
fishes, and embraces some interesting researches, carried on, as 
a prefatory note informs us, under the auspices of the Elizabeth 
Prof. Pri in hi 
compose the pectoral fin of the cod and other fishes. Instead of 
indulging, at his inauguration as an academic teacher, in vague 
generalities upon scientific pursuits, or urging the claims of his own 
subject, natural history, he presented a summary of certain results of 
his work ; connecting them with the researches of continental and 
American workers in the same field. Prof. Prince succeeds, we 
think, in exposing the error of which many eminent anatomists are 
the 
Vertebrata. We may not accept all that the author sets forth as to 
the identification of the various bones in the fin and shoulder 
girdle ; but just as the hand can be derived from the lower form of 
limb, the reptilian paddle, and the paddle can be regarded as 
a transformed shark’s fin, so the paired fins of bony fishes can be 
shown to arise in the same way as the Selachian, and to have quite 
as much morphological meaning. Prof. Prince’s researches support 
the German anatomists. The latter regard the fish’s fin as a 
transformed gill-appendage, and the shoulder as an altered gill- 
arch—-a view which is really but a modification of Owen’s older 
interpretation. Prof. Prince, we think, should not have omitted to 
notice that the presence of paired limbs is somehow related, in 
Vertebrates, to the presence of jaws. Fishes like the lamprey, 
without jaws, have no limbs. But perhaps Prof. Prince would derive 
the mouth cartilages from elements other than branchial. Be that 
as it may, it appears to be incontrovertible that the bony fish’s fin 
arises, like the shark’s, separate from the girdle in a horizontal plane, 
and cannot be a modified branchial appendage. 
In this address much evidence is brought forward, embryological 
and anatomical, in favour of a return to Cuvier’s interpretation, and 
g, Swirski, and others, and Prof. Prince has done well to 
mark ‘his own inauguration by a contribution of such unusual interest 
as this. 
Naturalist, 
