Classification of Fishes 3 8 i 



forties, Professor Agassiz once said to the writer: "At that 

 time I was on the verge of anticipating the views of Darwin, 

 but it seemed to me that the facts were contrary to the theories 

 of evolution. We had the highest fishes first." This statement 

 leads us to consider what is meant by high and low. Undoubt- 

 edly the sharks are higher than the bony fishes in the sense of 

 being nearer to the higher vertebrates. In brain, muscle, teeth, 

 and reproductive structures they are also more highly devel- 

 oped. In all skeletal and cranial characters the sharks stand 

 distinctly lower. But the essential fact, so far as evolution is 

 concerned, is not that the sharks are high or low. They are, in 

 almost all respects, distinctly generalized and primitive. The 

 bony fishes are specialized in various ways through adaptation 

 to the various modes of life they lead. Much of this specializa- 

 tion involves corresponding degeneration of organs whose func- 

 tions have ceased to be important. As a broad proposition it is 

 not true that " we had our highest fishes first," for in a complete 

 definition of high and low, the specialized perch or bass stands 

 higher. But whether true or not, it does not touch the question 

 of evolution which is throughout a process of adaptation to 

 conditions of life. 



Referring to the position of Agassiz and his early friend and 

 disciple, Hugh Miller, Dr. Traquair (1900) uses these words in an 

 address at Bradford, England; 



" It cannot but be acknowledged that the paleontology of 

 fishes is not less emphatic in the support of descent than that of 

 any other division of the animal kingdom. But in former days 

 the evidence of fossil ichthyology was by some read otherwise. 



" It is now a little over forty years since Hugh Miller died: 

 he who was one of the first collectors of the fossil fishes of the 

 Scottish old ■ red sandstone, and who knew these in some re- 

 spects better than any other man of his time, not excepting 

 Agassiz himself. Yet his life was spent in a fierce denunciation 

 of the doctrine of evolution, then only in its Lamarckian form, 

 as Darwin had not yet electrified the world with his ' Origin of 

 Species.' Many a time I wonder greatly what Hugh Miller 

 would have thought had he lived a few years longer, so as to 

 have been able to see the remarkable revolution which was 

 wrought by the publication of that book. 



