The End of Odd Fishes. 63 
and sly ways, or habits and uses of vantage and dis- 
advantage into model lessons yet. The arcana of the 
mountains, valleys and uplands is even yet very imper- 
fectly listed, particularly the insect life ; but it is high time 
they were, for all this kind of thing has gone on since the 
year One, during the howlings of war and the pipings of 
peace, and science never stands still no more than human 
passions, by the beneficent law of Providence. 
THE END OF ODD FISHES.* 
BY I. K. LORD, F.Z.S. 
EVERAL observers have noticed certain remarkable 
appendages, as of frequent occurrence on individuals 
of most of the species belonging to the genus Aspredo, In 
the “ Regne Animal,” we find Cuvier alludes to them “as 
globules which appear to be their eggs, adhering to the . 
thorax by pedicles.” Bloch also observed them, and not 
clearly understanding what such an unusual accumulation 
of strange-looking pores meant, described a species of the 
six-barbled Aspredo (A. sex-czrrhts) as being new to science, 
naming it Platystachus cotylephorus. In the “ Histoire. 
Naturelle des Poissons,” we read, “ I have never seen them 
in the males, and the females do not possess them at all 
seasons.” Here the author clearly imagines these appen- 
dages mark some peculiar condition of the female, an 
assumption more recent investigations prove to be quite 
correct. 
The Aspredo batrachus, or toad-like aspredo, is not by 
any means attractive as an object of beauty; the upper 
jaw, broad and flat, projects far beyond the lower, the eyes 
are small, and the ugly, unkissable-looking mouth is further 
—TI cannot say adorned, supplied will do—with eight long 
fleshy pendants, barbles or beards in other words, which 
dangle, like living fishing-lines, from different parts of this 
odd and ugly fish’s face. Two barbels spring from the 
maxillary; these are dilated at their bases into broad 
ribbon-like membranes, from each of which sproutsa single 
* From ‘Science Gossip” for August:- 
