2 
SHARKS AND EAY-I’ISHES. 
system of nature, although professedly artificial, was intimately 
connected with a profound knowledge of the aflinities of natural 
objects, has even gone so far as to separate them essentially from 
the great family of true fishes, by making them a branch of his 
class of amphibious animals, under the title of swimming amphi- 
bians: the serjrents and other reptiles being formed into another 
class of the same general order. 
CHONDROPTEKTGUOTJS PISHES. 
Hatino a skeleton with few bony particles in its structure, and also 
termed Plagiostomi from the situation of the mouth, and ii, may be 
added, the nostrils, which are beneath a projecting snout. 
SHAEKS AND EAY-FISHES. 
As regards their proper station in the natural classification of 
animals we so far agree with the distinguished Swedish naturalist 
Linneeus, as to place the family which comprises the Sharks and 
Eays in the rank which is next below that of reptiles: to which 
order they are most nearly related in their general structure, 
vital physiology, and mental instincts; and not in the much 
inferior station which includes the Lampreys, as is done in the 
greater part of modern arrangements. 
With the Lamijreys, myxine and lancelet, this class of fishes 
possesses nothing in common, except a soft skeleton that for the 
most part is without bony fibres, and several openings through 
which the water jrasses in the action of breathing; which are 
agreements too slignt and obscure to warrant the conclusion that 
these families possess any near connection of natural affinity, 
whereas the differences in other respects, and even in the par- 
ticulars named, are very wide, a.s we shall presently see. And 
therefore, while wc suffer the last-named family— of Pctromij- 
zonidm, or Lampreys, to remain at the end of our list, as at the 
vanishing point of fishes in their transition towards the class 
of worms, Ave assert for this tribe of choudropterygious fishes 
a prominent station at the head of the whole family of fishes. 
It is because of the softness of the skeleton in the class of 
chondropterygious fishes that the minds of naturalists have been 
