68 FISH GALLERY. 



restorations. The colours that have been given to the models are, 

 of course, fanciful ; the plaster models in their natural whiteness 

 would have been painful to the eye, and although to leave them 

 uncoloured would have been a more candid admission of ignorance 

 as to what the real, colours of the fishes were, the models would 

 not have lent themselves well for comparison of their structural 

 features with those of the stuffed fishes exhibited in the same 



CoSLACANTHOIDES. 



The suborder Coelacanthoides is represented by a restoration 

 of Undina gulo (192, and fig. 39) from the Lower Lias of 

 Dorset, and a cast of a specimen of Undina penicillata, 191, from 

 the Lithographic Stone (Lower Kimmeridgian) of Bavaria. The 

 range of the suborder in the present state of our knowledge is 

 from the Lower Carboniferous to the Upper Cretaceous. The 

 proximal skeletal elements, or axonosts, of the anal fin and of each 

 of the dorsal fins are fused into a single piece. The paired fins 

 are comparatively short (obtusely lobate), and the skeleton of the 

 pectoral is unibasal. The vertebral column is without bony 

 centra. In the tail fin above and below the vertebral axis the 

 axonosts are equal in number to the neural and hsemal spines of 

 the vertebra?, and each axonost is directly connected with a single 

 dermal fin-ray. The outline of the tail is symmetrical, usually 

 with an axial vestige of the dwindling caudal fin proper, showing 

 that the " tail fin " is composed mainly of detached portions of the 

 dorsal and anal fins. The distal parts of the dermal fin-rays of all 

 the fins are transversely jointed, but they are not forked. The 

 scales are cycloid, and the teeth are simple. The skeleton of the 

 gill-cover is reduced to a single opercular bone. There is a 

 bony wall to the air-bladder. The nostrils are on the under side 

 of the snout. The principal genera are Coelacanthus (Carbo- 

 niferous and Permian of Britain and Germany), Undina (Jurassic), 

 Diplurus (Trias of North America), and Macropoma (Cretaceous 

 of England, &c). 



