sh) 
vilifer : Curvier’s Animal Kingdom, gc. p. 206.) I would 
notice some of the cheetodons as those in which the 
dorsal and abdominal rays are not so much remarks 
able for their expansion, as for the angle at which 
they are set. They become by their horizontality so 
many susidiary aids to the tail alone, and I would 
refer to the platax Gaimardi, (Cuwer’s Animal King- 
dom, éc. p. 176.) as a remarkable illustration of this 
arrangement of what are ordinarily the vertical fins ; 
and I would point out again the loricaria cirrhosa 
as a fish in which the lobes of the tail are divided 
between a slender filament of prodigious length, and 
a five-rayed membrane, near the dorsal fin, seeming 
mere modifications of the tail. Here we see the co- 
lumn lengthened and shortened, and the accessory fins 
altered to adjust the necessary directive force, to the 
elongation and contraction ; and to the consequent 
habits of the fish. Here the alterations are made to 
suit the specialities of the spinal column. 
In fishes, the head and body are in a line :—no 
neck and chest intervene. All that framed bulk 
in which are contained the lungs and heart of man, 
is thurst up into fhe circle in which we circumscribe 
the fish’s head. ‘There the blade bone, or scapula, 
broad and flat occurs sometimes attached to the spi- 
nal column, and sometimes to the cranial bones, or 
buried in the substance of the flesh about what would 
be the shoulder in the mammalian series of animals, 
without any other attachment to either the vertebra 
or the head. In this narrow space, however, the fish 
has a structure of a higher character than mamma- 
lians, inasmuch as it has a fuller developed structure 

