XIV LIFE AND WOKKS OF COPE. 



of living types he broke up into a number of groups by an 

 originality of analysis as marked as in his separation of the 

 five great primary divisions. He first divided the subclass 

 into three groups, named, Chondrostei, Physostomi; and Phy- 

 soclysti (he subsequently removed the Chondrostei from the 

 Actinopteri, and applied the name Malacopteri to the Phy- 

 sostomes, and Acanthopteri to the Physoclysts). 



" No less than 24 orders were recognized in the Observa- 

 tions," says Professor Gill,* "to receive the Acanthopterous 

 fishes and these were subsequently added to. Of the 24 or- 

 ders as many as 15 were endowed with new names. Eight of 

 the names have been adopted by most American naturalists 

 as the designations of orders or suborders. These are Sel- 

 achostomi, Scyphophori, Pledospondyli, Haplomi, Enchelyceph- 

 ali, Colocephali, Percesoces and Hemibranchii. The other 

 names have been sunk as synonyms. The most meritori- 

 ous of Cope's generalizations expressed in ordinal terms, in 

 some respects at least, were those involving the constitu- 

 ents of the order Pledospondyli and the separation of the 

 eel-like fishes into different groups. 



The order Pledospondyli (fishes with the anterior verte- 

 brse coalesced, as distinguished from Isospondyli (Cope) in 

 which all the vertebrae are separated) was framed for the 

 numerous fresh-water fishes comprised in the families Ga- 

 tostomidse (Suckers), Cyprinidse, (Carps, etc.,), Cobitidse 

 (Loaches), Sternopygidx (Carapos, etc), and the numerous 

 South American and African fishes representing the Cyprin- 

 oideans, constituting the families Characinidas and Ery- 

 thrinidse. These had been arranged previously in three 

 groups widely separated and superficially quite unlike each 

 other and were considered to be related to forms with 

 which they are now known to have little in common ex- 

 cept some external characteristics. Their combination 



* This section upon the classification of the Teleostei is directly quoted from Pro- 

 fessor Gill's Memorial Address before the American Philosophical Society as far as 

 the middle of page xyi, A number of minor changes and insertions are made 

 elsewhere in order to make the matter clearer to students. 



