CHAPTER XLIX 
THE ORDER OF SOLID-JAW FISHES 
PLECTOGNA Till 
The characters on which the members of this 
Order have been brought together are, for the 
general reader, rather obscure. They are strictly 
anatomical, and relate to the manner in which 
the teeth and bones of the jaw are grown to- 
gether, and solidified. On the whole, it will be 
about as easy to become acquainted with the 
various groups of fishes composing the Order 
as to learn fully and correctly the precise ana- 
tomical characters which are common to all. 
This Order contains some very odd and pict- 
uresque forms; and, fortunately for the student, 
good examples of them are fairly common along 
the Atlantic coast. 
The Trigger-Fish , 1 or File-Fish, is a very 
good species to represent this entire group. It 
derives one of its names from the large, movable 
spine of solid bone (a fin-ray of the front dorsal 
fin), which stands upon the foremost point of its 
back, with a smaller trigger behind it, like that 
upon an old-fashioned hair-trigger rifle. The 
large spine can be set quite rigidly by a neat 
interlocking device supplied by the second 
spine. 
This fish is a thin-bodied creature, and its 
skin has the toughness, the rigidity and even the 
external appearance of stamped leather, with the 
roughness of fine sand-paper. It is a fine fish 
for the first efforts of the amateur taxidermist, 
for it has ingrowing scales that cannot possibly 
come off, and its colors are equally fast. 
All the Trigger-Fishes are habitants of tropical 
and subtropical waters, and feed chiefly upon 
small shell-fishes (mollusks) which their strong 
jaws and teeth enable them to masticate success- 
fully. Some of them, like the Orange File-Fish, 
are brilliantly colored. In the tropics they are 
considered edible, but the few that exist along 
our Atlantic coast are not ranked as food fishes. 
The species shown in the illustration is the one 
1 Ba-lis'tes ca-pris'cus. See figure on page 374. 
most widely known along our Gulf coast, and 
also the Atlantic coast up to the mouth of the 
Potomac. In the Bahamas and the Bermudas, 
the skins of Trigger-Fishes are extensively used 
by carpenters in place of sand-paper for smooth- 
ing the surface of wood previous to polishing. 
The Box -Fish, or Trunk-Fish, " is one of the 
curiosities of the tropic seas, and of curio-shops 
generally. Its skin is a rigid, triangular box, 
shaped in cross-section like an isosceles triangle, 
and consists of large hexagonal plates of thin 
bone, joined firmly together by the regular 
integument. 
Of these fishes we have four species on our 
Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and one off California. 
According to Dr. G. Brown Goode, all the species 
of Box-Fishes were so thoroughly and correctly 
studied by the fathers of natural history two 
hundred years ago, that their classification of 
the group has stood the test of time, and come 
down even into these troublous times unchanged 
and unimproved. 
The Bellows-Fish , 3 or Rabbit-Fish, is pos- 
sessed of many local names, such as Globe, 
Bottle, Bloiver, and even Egg Fish. When 
taken from the water, and scratched smartly on 
the abdomen against the grain of the small spines 
which cover that region, it begins to pump air 
into its interior, the skin expands like india-rub- 
ber, and in a moment it assumes balloon-like 
proportions. If the fish is then thrown into the 
water, it floats belly upward for a moment, then 
suddenly the air is expelled, the fish collapses, 
instantly turns right side up, and disappears. 
This species ranges from Cape Cod to the 
Gulf of Mexico, and may be looked for with con- 
fidence in the pound-nets at nearly all our sea- 
side resorts. 
2 Os-trac'i-on quad-ri-cor'nis. See illustration on 
page 374. 
3 Lag-o-ceph'a-lus lae-vi-ga'tus. 
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