OF THE UNITED STATES D< 



about, one of those rare northward-ranging stragglers, was cap- 

 tured at Cape May in 1S78. This specimen was four feet wide, 

 and over sixteen feet long, and possessed a forty-nine-toothed 

 saw, measuring over four feet in length. Sometimes they grow 

 very much bigger than this, even. Their mode of locomotion in 

 their native element is a kind of a swimming waddle, swinging 

 the head and saw from side to side. This action is powerfully in- 

 creased when they are captured in seines, which is by no means 

 an infrequent occurrence, and then the piscine Hercules soon cuts 

 his way out. Fishermen cannot endure the sawfish, as their nets 

 are thus so often ripped up. Many marvelous stories are told 

 about the feats of the sawfish, of which probably only a small 

 percentage are true. To illustrate the present contribution, I 

 have made two drawings of this fish, and they are reproduced in 

 Figs. 6 and 7. It will be observed how Ha1 he is when viewed 

 upon direct lateral aspect; this is quite in keeping with a habit 

 he has of spending not a little of his time on the bottom. When 

 looked at upon his under side (Fig. 7), most of his interesting 

 characters come in sight. We then gain the best idea of the 

 shape of his saw, the fins and the mouth, and other parts. 



Ichthyologists have created the genus Pristis to contain the 

 sawfishes, and our Florida species is known as P. pectinatus. 

 They are most nearly related to the Kays, other very remarkable 

 fishes that I shall have something to say about a little further 

 on. Rays, Sawfishes, and Sharks all belong to the cartilaginous 

 group of fish-forms, because they have skeletons composed only 

 of cartilage. The Rays and Sharks taken together form the sub- 

 order 1'lagiostomata, and they are divided into a number of 

 families, to the first of which the Sawfishes are relegated. 



There are only about half a dozen species of sawfishes known 

 to science, and they are all confined pretty generally to the 

 warmer seas of the world. According to Dr. Gunther, who says, 

 although " the sawfishes possess all the essential characteristics 

 of the rays proper, they retain the elongated form of the body of 

 sharks, the tail being excessively muscular, and the sole organ of 

 locomotion. The " saw " is a fiat and enormously developed pro- 

 longation of the snout, with an endo-skeleton, which consists of 

 from three to five cartilaginous tubes ; these are, in fact, merely 

 the rostral processes of the cranial cartilage, and are found in all 

 rays, though they are commonly much shorter. The integument 

 of the saw is hard, covered with shagreen ; and a series of 



