BIG GAME FISHES 
CHAPTER I 
THE STRUCTURE OF GAME FISHES 
A FISH may be termed a cold-blooded, gill- 
breathing, backboned animal, adapted to life in 
the water, through which it moves by the aid 
of fins, which correspond to the limbs of other 
animals. The true fishes are represented by the 
types treated in this volume, and a glance at 
the skeleton, divested of skin and flesh, affords 
the angler an idea of its structure, and the rela- 
tion of its parts one to another. The skeleton 
of a typical bony fish like the perch appears to 
have two backbones, but the central one (68) is 
the vertebra, made up of sometimes two hundred 
sections. Each vertebra is hollow on the ends, 
the space so formed being filled with a glutinous 
substance, the edges of the bones being connected 
by ligaments, which allow more or less lateral 
motion —a vast amount in the eel, very little in 
B I 
