DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS 0¥ ANIMALS, 



197 



ftbie or curious kinds, I may mention the echeneis, remora, or sucking-fish 5 

 which inhabits the Mediterranean and Pacific seas ; and though only from 

 twelve to eighteen inches long, adheres so firmly to the sides of vessels 

 and of larger fishes, by its head, that it is often removed With great difii- 

 culty ; and was, by the ancients, supposed to have the power of arresting 

 the motion of the ship to which it adhered. I may also mention the 

 chastodon rostraius^ beaked or rostrate chaetodon ; an inhabitant of 

 the Indian seas, which curiously catches for its food insects that are flying 

 over the surface of the sea, by ejecting water from its tubular snout with 

 so exact an aim as to strike and stun them with the greatest certainty, 

 and hereby to bring them down into its jaws. 



The FOURTH ORDER of the Linnean class of fishes, is called abdominal ; 

 in consequence of having the' ventral or belly fins placed considerably 

 more backward, and behind the pectoral or chest fins : and here, as in all 

 the preceding, the gills are bony. The salmo, or salmon, with its nume- 

 rous families of trout, smelt, char and grayhng ; the esox or pike, in- 

 cluding the gar-fish ; the clupea or herring, which as a genus comprises 

 the pilchard, sprat, and anchovy ; the cyprinus or carp, including the 

 gold-fish, gudgeon, tench, and a variety of similar species ; the mugil oT 

 mullet, are among the more fainihar kinds of this extensive order. 



Of these, the herrhig is one of the most remarkable, from its migratory 

 habits ; and the carp, from its great longevity, having in many instances 

 been known to reach more than a hundred years of age, and from its 

 facility of being tamed, and made to approach the edge of a fish-pond on 

 the sound of its dinner-bell, and to eat crumbs of bread out of a man's 

 hand. 



But amidst the most singular of the kinds belonging to this order is the 

 exocoetus or flying fish, which, though occasionally traced in other seas, 

 is chiefly found between the tropics, and has a power, by means of its long 

 pectoral fins, of raising itself out of the water and continuing suspended 

 in the air till these fins become dry ; by w hich means it effectually avoids 

 the jaws of such predatory fishes as are in pursuit of it. But unhappily 

 it is often seized at the same time by the talons of ospreys, sea-gulls, of 

 some other rapacious birds, that are perpetually hovering over the water 

 to take advantage of its ascent. There are, however, various other fishes 

 that have a similar power of flight or suspension, and from a similar cause., 

 but none in so complete a degree. It is to this curious power Dean Swifl 

 jaakes allusion in the follov/ing lines : 



" So fishes, rising from the maic, 



Can soar with moisten'd wings, on Ligh; 

 The moisture dried, they sink asain, 

 And dip their wings again to ny." 



The FIFTH ORDER OF FI6HES is denominated branchiostegous, m con- 

 ?3equence of its gills being destitute of bony rays ; by which it is peculiarly 

 distinguished from all the preceding orders, and obtains a mark which 

 has been laid hold of by Linneus as constituting its ordinal character. It 

 consists for the most part of a group of sea- monsters, or natural deformi- 

 ties, if the term might be allowed ; as the ostraceon or trunk- fish, the 

 diodon and tretradon, sun-fish, and lump-fish, many of v/hich are so com- 

 pletely truncated at either end as to resemble the middle part of any com- 

 mon large fish with its head and tail lopped oflf ; the syngnathus, pipe or 

 needle-fish ; and the lophius or frog-fish. In one of the species of this 

 last kind we meet with a singular decoy for entrapping smaller fishes as 



