THE LAMPREY. 
293 
Although popularly called Bony Pike, from the mailed exterior and the lengthened wide- 
jawed form, which has some resemblance to that of a pike, this fish belongs to a totally 
different order, and in most points of its construction is formed after a different fashion. The 
general structure, indeed, of the Bony Pike is very remarkable, and affords another instance 
of the difficulty with which the fish are classed. The body is elongated, and the jaws are 
also lengthened and well furnished with teeth, looking very like an exaggerated pike’s mouth, 
or the head of the common gavial of the Ganges. In each jaw there is a single row of sharp 
and conical teeth, and between them, and on the palate, are numerous other teeth, much 
smaller in size. 
The scales of the Bony Pike are rhombic in form, very like the flat porcelain tiles with 
which certain ancient chimney-pieces were wont to be decorated, and hardly inferior to those 
tiles in the polished hardness of their exterior. They are very regularly arranged, being set 
so as to form a series of oblique rows, extending from the back to the abdomen. As in 
the sturgeons and sharks, the vertebral column runs along the upper edge of the tail fin. 
This fish is found in the lakes of America, and sometimes attains a considerable size, being 
BONY PIKE .—Lepidosteus osseus. 
often captured measuring three or four feet in length, and is said sometimes to attain a length 
of seven feet. Several species are said to inhabit the same waters ; but when the remarkable 
diversity of form and color which often reigns among the fishes is considered, it is highly 
probable that the supposed species may be nothing more than well-marked varieties. The 
flesh of the Bony Pike is said to be good. 
Bony Pike, Gar Pikes ( Lepidosteus ). Two species of this genus are common in the Great 
Lakes and rivers of America. Their alliance with forms now extinct renders the species of 
great interest. Very few are now existing. 
The well-known Lamprey and its kin are remarkable for the wonderful resemblance which 
their mouths bear to that of a leech. 
They are all long-bodied snake-like fish, and possess a singular apparatus of adhesion, 
which acts on the same principle as the disc of the sucking-fish, or the ventral fins of the 
goby, though it is set on a different part of the body. If all had their rights, indeed, the 
title of sucking-fish ought more correctly to be applied to the Lamprey than to the creature 
which is at present dignified by that appellation; as the one really applies its mouth to 
any object to which it desires to adhere, and forms a vacuum by suction, whereas the 
