32 The Ganoids 
ward curve at the extremity, when finally there appears the 
beginning of a lobe underneath, pointing to a complete hetero- 
cercal tail. All this is as in the bony fishes, but this is the 
permanent condition of the garpike, while in the bony fishes 
the extremity of the dorsal cord becomes extinct. The mode 
of development of the pectoral lobe (very large in this species) 
furnishes another resemblance. In the brain, and in the mode 
of formation of the gills, a likeness to the sharks is noticeable. 
The young garpikes move very slowly, and seem to float quietly, 
save an exceedingly rapid vibration of the pectorals and the 
tip of the tail. They do not swim about much, but attach 
themselves to fixed objects by an extraordinary horseshoe- 
shaped ring of sucker-appendages about the mouth. These 
appendages remain even after the snout has become so extended 
that the ultimate shape is hinted at; and furthermore, it is 
a remnant of this feature that forms the fleshy bulb at the end 
of the snout in the adult. The investigations thus far show 
that the young garpike has many characteristics in common 
with the sharks and skates, but it is not so different from the 
bony fishes as has been supposed.”’ 
Fossil Garpikes.—A number of fossil garpikes, referred by 
Cope to the genus Clastes and by Eastman and Woodward to 
Lepidosteus, are found in the Eocene of Europe and America. 
The most perfect of these remains is called Lepisosteus atrox, 
upward of four feet long, as large as an alligator-gar, which the 
species much resembles. Although found in the Eocene, Dr. 
C. R. Eastman declares that “it has no positively archaic features. 
If we inquire into the more remote or pre-Eocene history of 
Lepidosteids, paleontology gives no answer. They blossom 
forth suddenly and fully differentiated at the dawn of the 
Tertiary, without the least clue to their ancestry, unheralded 
and unaccompanied by any intermediate forms, and they have 
remained essentially unchanged ever since.”’ 
Another fossil species is Leptsosteus fimbriatus, from the 
Upper Eocene of England. Scales and other fragments of 
garpikes are found in Germany, Belgium, and France, in Eocene 
and Miocene rocks. On some of these the nominal genera 
Natsia, Trichiurides, and Pneumatosteus are founded. Clastes, 
regarded by Eastman as fully identical with Leptsosteus, is said 
