66 
SCANDINAVIAN FISHES. 
Fam. BERYCIDfE. 
Form of the body oblong or deep , and compressed. Eyes large. Most of the external bones of the head armed , 
at least during youth , with spines or teeth. Sccdes large with numerous dentations in the margin, and not ex- 
tending over the dorsal or anal fin. Simple , pointed cardiform teeth on the jaws and , usually , on the palate. 
Ventral fins thoracic , with 1 spinous ray and 6 or more soft rays. Brancliiostegal rays 8. Branched rays in the 
caudal fin 15 at least. Most , if not all, of the rudimentary rays at the upper and lower margins of this fin , 
are spinous. 
The Berycidce occupy a peculiar position in the 
system. Cuvier formed them into a distinct group 
within the family of the Percidce. In 1837 Bonaparte" 
formed this group into a subfamily, Holocentrini, and 
in 1839 Lowe 6 changed it into a distinct family, Be- 
rycidce. Among these fishes we find the Perciform type 
exhibited in its oldest known forms, as deep-sea fishes 
with the integument well developed but with a com- 
paratively weak dental equipment of the jaws. In this 
form they lived as early as the Cretaceous Period. “It 
is a fact well worth our careful attention,” says Agassiz 0 , 
“that these genera are the oldest representatives not 
only of the Percidce, but also of the whole order of 
Ctenoides. They are, so to speak, the synthetic ex- 
pression of the whole order at the beginning of its 
development, and as it appeared before it began to pass 
through all those changes of form which belong to later 
times when life appeared in new shapes.” One of these 
traces of earlier times is the large number of rays 
in the ventral fins, which has generally been reduced 
in other cases in proportion as the Teleosteous type 
became marked by the changes of form appearing dur- 
ing the course of its development. Other peculiarities 
of similar significance appear, however, in special forms 
of the Berycidce. One of them we find in the connec- 
tion, pointed out by Cuvier d , in the genus Myripristis 
between the air-bladder and the hearing-organ- in the 
skull, and also the contraction of the air-bladder into 
an anterior and posterior part, points which are now 
most general and most strongly developed in the Silu- 
riclce, Cyprinidce and Characinidce, all three of which 
are to be reckoned among the less advanced develop- 
mental stages of the Teleosteous type. Another of these 
peculiarities is the preservation of the pneumatic duct, 
a Physostomous character observed by KneiC in the 
genus Holocentrum of this family. 
The family includes about 60 species distributed 
among 5 or 6 genera, and principally belonging to the 
tropic seas. As in the preceding family, red is the 
predominant colour of the body. To the Scandinavian 
Fauna we can only assign one species of the 
Genus BERYX. 
Only one dorsal fin, with the spinous-rayed part shorter than the soft-ray ecV . Cardiform teeth on the jaws, the 
vomer and the palatine bones. 
This genus, which has given its name to the family, 
is the oldest belonging to it and therefore presumably 
shows us the nearest approach to the original type. The 
body is fairly high, strongly compressed laterally, and 
thickest at the head, with fairly lobate pectoral fins and 
both dorsal and anal fins displaying a striking likeness 
of structure to the respective flaps of the caudal fin, 
being anteriorly supported by spinous rays gradually 
° A new Systematic Arrangement of Vertebrate d Animals , Trans. Lin. Soc., vol. XVIII, p. 297, — printed in 1840. 
b Suppl. Syn. Fish. Mad., Trans. Zool. Soc., vol. Ill, p . 1 , — published in 1849. 
e Recli. Poiss. Foss., tome IV, p. 115. 
d Cuv., Val., Hist. Nat. Poiss., vol. Ill, p. 168. 
e Stzber. Akad. Wiss. Wien, XLIX (1864), I, p. 457. 
f In other cases — in the younger types of the family — the spinous-rayed part of the dorsal is generally distinct as an anterior 
iin, and is longer than the soft-rayed part, which is of about the same degree of development as the anal fin. 
