112 CLASSIFICATION OF FISHES* 



direct, near or remote, to many hundred others : it 

 is, therefore, absolutely impossible for all these simili- 

 tudes to be so clear as to silence gainsayers, or even to 

 strike, at first sight, the more experienced naturalist, 

 who often can only estimate the value of the analogy 

 between two remote groups, by tracing these analogies 

 through a series of intervening forms. The innume- 

 rable modifications of the same structure which we see in 

 nature, accomplishes two objects: they excite our won- 

 der and admiration of the Infinite Mind whose fiat has 

 produced them; and they enable us, though often dimly, 

 to trace, in one or two characters, a symbolical relation- 

 ship between a great number of groups, quite different 

 in all other respects. But, perhaps, an example will best 

 explain our meaning. No analogies can well be stronger 

 than those between the chelonian reptiles and the che- 

 loniform fishes, forming our present order Plectognathes : 

 but then, if all the fishes in this latter group were cased, 

 in the same way, in hard plates — if they all had very 

 small mouths, the sharp and crenated jaws performing 

 the office of teeth — if they all were eminently aquatic — 

 and, lastly, if all their pectoral fins were formed as in 

 ordinary fishes — what possible characters w r ould be left 

 by which to indicate their analogy also to the Amphibia, 

 or frogs, which are as truly and confessedly analogous 

 to the tortoises, as the tortoises are to the cheloniform 

 fishes ? No such resemblances, that we know of, would 

 remain, except their imperfect skeleton; or none, at 

 least, which would strike an ordinary observer; and we 

 should thus have no apparent mark by which to conjecture 

 the relationship. But Nature has provided against this : 

 has created such a diversity in the order Plectognathes, 

 that, while one division immediately reminds us of the 

 chelonian reptiles, another is an equally strong repre- 

 sentation of the amphibious frogs. The Lophius picta 

 of Shaw (Jig. 6.) will convince the student we are not 

 prone to exaggerate resemblances. We have only to 

 point to the Chironectidce in proof of this latter relation: 



