380 CLASSIFICATION OF FISHES. 



so that his arrangement of the Siluridce is virtually the 

 same in the last edition of his Regne Animal as it was 

 in the first. Great alterations, no doubt, would have 

 been made in his general work on ichthyology ; for it 

 must have been evident to himself, that, as the family 

 now stands, it is much in the same state as those of 

 Falco, Sylvia, and Muscicapa, among birds, once were, 

 when Linnaean authority was considered paramount to 

 that of nature. With a hope, therefore, of laying 

 some foundation for a natural arrangement of this 

 group, to which for many years we have felt much 

 attached, we shall now submit to the ichthyologist our 

 latest views on its internal and external relations. Al- 

 though this will be the result of much personal inves- 

 tigation, it would be injustice not to add that this 

 could never have been accomplished, but for the inva- 

 luable labours of Spix, Agassiz, and Hamilton, whose 

 admirable descriptions and characteristic figures have 

 made us almost as well acquainted with the Siluridce of 

 Tropical India and America, as if we had personally 

 examined all the subjects themselves. 



(276.) The natural station of the Sillridje, in the 

 circle of the present order, has already been investigated. 

 By occupying an intermediate station between the Gadi- 

 cUb, or the cod-fish, and the Cobitidce, or loaches, it be- 

 comes the most aberrant family of the circle ; and thus 

 corresponds to the order of cheloniform fishes, or the 

 Plectognathes, and to the class of Amphibia. These 

 analogies, which are particularly beautiful, at once ac- 

 count for the fact of our finding among the Silurida 

 a far greater proportion of mailed fishes than exist in 

 any other group, either of the Malacopteryges or of the 

 Acanthopteryges : it is this peculiar character, in short, 

 which marks the typical perfection of the whole. Our 

 first division, therefore, or sub-family, is composed of 

 the Loricarince, or mailed cat-fish : they are distin- 

 guished, like the Lor. plecostomus Linn. {fig. 78.), by 

 the head and body being covered, more or less, by hard 

 osseous plates, forming large rude scales ; and especially 



