CAUTILAGJNOUS FISHES. 
515 
reduced to a point, forms a long, strong, straight, sword-like termina- 
tion, flat on both sides, but. on the two edges it is furnished with 
numerous strong teeth of considerable length, which are prolongations 
of the hard, bony substance which forms the muzzle— forming, in 
sliort, a sword-blade deeply toothed on each edge. 
Thus armed, the saw, or sword-fish, as it is sometimes called, the 
length of which is from twelve to fifteen feet, fearlessly attacks the 
most formidable mhabitants of the sea. With its threatening weapon, 
sometimes two yards in length, it dares to measure its strength with 
the whale. All fishermen who visit the northern seas assert that the 
meeting of these ocean potentates is always followed by a combat of 
the most singular kind, in which the activity of the sword-fish is a 
match for the formidable strength of the whale. Occasionally it 
dashes itself with such force against the sides of a ship, that its sword 
is broken in the timber. In the Museum of Natural History of Paris, 
the blade of a sword-fish may be seen which was thus implanted in the 
side of a whale. 
III. Stukiona. 
In the second division of cartilaginous fishes, or sturgeons, the gills 
are free, as in the ordinary fishes. In the sturgeon the gill-openhigs 
are a single, very wide orifice, with an operculum, hut without radiating 
membrane. They are fishes of great size, living in the sea, but 
ascending the larger rivers in the spawning season. Our space only 
permits us to notice the Chimsera and Sturgeon. 
The naturalists Clusius and Aldrovandus compared the fish, to which 
hey gave the name of Chimeera ardica, to the cliiimera, a monster of 
mythological antiquity, which is represented with the body of a goat, 
the head of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and a gaping throat which 
vomited flames. The strange form of this fish, the manner in which it 
moi es, the different parts ol its muzzle, its mode of showing its teeth, 
its ape-like contortions and grimaces, its long tail, which acts with 
such rapidity,— reminding one not a little of a reptile,— are well calcu- 
ated to strike the imagination. At a later period medimval naturalists 
''veie contented to see in it a fish with a lion’s head, and as the lion 
Vas then regarded as the king of animals, so the chinnera became the 
■Herring king. 
