ANALOGIES OF THE MALACOPTERYGES. 233 



a single ray; and even in the more typical forms_, as Ga- 

 dus and Mustelus, the three hinder rays are often so short 

 as to appear obsolete : their slimy body^ fleshy fins_, and 

 minute scales, are all so many characters possessed by the 

 eels; while this resemblance is carried so far in the rock- 

 lings (^Motelld), that the forms of both are nearly alike; 

 both having the body very long, and the anal, dorsal, and 

 caudal fins nearly, if not quite, united. The Siluridce 

 are no less strikingly analogous to the Plectognathes, or 

 cheloniform fishes. In both there are no true scales, but 

 in both are the typical groups incased in a coat of mailed 

 plates ; so that Loricaria is as perfect a prototype of 

 Ostracioriy as the half-mailed Pimelodes are of Balistes. 

 Finally, we come to those soft-rayed fish, whose mode 

 of generation separates them from all the others of their 

 own order, and likens them to the cartilaginous or chon- 

 dropterygious fishes: these are the Cohitidce, or loaches — 

 one of the most remarkable groups of fish in the whole 

 order. Whether we consider the peculiarity of their 

 external or internal anatomy, we can only feel astonish- 

 ment that neither one nor the other should have given 

 them a more prominent station in our modern systems 

 than they have hitherto held. To place viviparous and 

 oviparous fish merely as genera following each other, 

 appears just as natural and consistent as if we arranged 

 the flat fish and the skates as cognate families, merely 

 because both are flat, and have the fins surrounding their 

 body. 



(210.) If the validity of the foregoing comparisons 

 are admitted, — and they appear to us as true to nature as 

 any of those already brought forward among the more 

 perfect vertebrated classes, — it follows, as a necessary 

 consequence, that the families of the malacopterygious 

 fishes follow each other in the same order, also, as do 

 those of the Cartilagines. We have just glanced inci- 

 dentally at the similitude between the flat fish and the 

 rays ; let us see, therefore, if this is merely fanciful, or 

 founded in nature : a comparison of the two groups 

 will determine this question. 



