CHAPTEE XX. 

 SKATE. 



'H ^01^7 Ix^iis iov(Ta to \(vk6v koX fieKav otSf . 

 The only fish that's cooked au hlanc, and noir.* 



TO connect objects in Natural History by any single 

 point of resemblance, however characteristic — though 

 it may be convenient for the sake of reference, and be 

 adopted by systematic writers generally in their books — 

 is often to take strange liberties with the book of Nature, 

 and to bring into an unnatural and coerced apposition 

 creatures the most dissimilar. A striking exemplifica- 

 tion of this occurs in the grouping together by authors 

 of the small family Petromyzons just mentioned, with 

 the Rays, of which mention is now to be made. It 

 must seem, on a primd facie view, quite incredible to 

 any one but an ichthyologist, that lampreys and skates 

 should have anything more in common than gudgeons 

 and whales, or mianows andtritons ; and farther inquiry 

 would perhaps only tend to strengthen such a general 

 impression : for while the lamprey is almost firdess, a 

 skate is nearly half fin ; while the body of the lamprey 

 is long and cylindrical, that of the skate, on the other 

 hand, is a lozenge and flat ; and whereas the first tribe 

 have smooth backs, and carry no hostile weapons, the 

 other, armed at every point, bristles cap-a-queue with 

 swords, saws, and stilettoes. As to size, again, we might 

 as well compare Lilliputians with Brobdignagians, as 

 some species of the first with the larger kinds of the se- 

 cond j for the longest Petromyzons rarely reach three 



* Au beurre noir. 



