76 
MONKFISH. 
Sharks and Skates, thus affording an example, in addition to 
the cartilaginous condition of the bone itself, of apparent 
conformity with the earlier stage of existence of mammalian 
animals; and which some writers have thought proper to regard 
as a defect, or at least an inferior state of development; but 
which, as we have ali'eady shewn on the authority of Mr. 
Owen, when we spoke of the Sharks in general, beyond doubt 
answers an important use in the natural occonomy of this 
great family of animals. We remark it more especially in this 
species because it is not merely an unclosed opening in the 
skull, but a well-organized opening of definite formation. It 
becomes a question whether, by endosmodic action penetrating 
through the membrane, this is not the passage through which 
the water so abundantly found in the cavity of the skull and 
spinal column finds admittance, as we see it existing there in 
all the species of Sharks and Skates. 
It has been remarked in the general description of this fish, 
as a character in which it stands alone, that it is deficient in 
that projection of the skull which is so distinguishing a mark 
of its kindred families of Sharks and Rays; but the deficiency 
itself affords an advantage which the others do not possess, — of 
being furnished with such a protractile upper jaw as is capable 
of extensive motion, especially in an upward direction, cor- 
responding with that of the head itself, in relationship with 
the vertebral column. This vertebral column, or back-bone, 
which possesses about one hundred and twenty separate joints, 
as in the generality of Sharks, is flexible in all its extent, 
none of the bones of which it consists being inseparately united 
together, as they are in the uppermost part of their course 
in Skates; and at the tail they assume a course seemingly at 
variance with that of their race in general, by passing to their 
termination on the border of the lower rather than of the 
upper lobe of the caudal fin. The organization w'hich seems 
equivalent to spinous processes of the vertebrse, that stand up 
to support the dorsal fins, are in fact broad plates, each of 
which involves at least two of the vertebra}, and thus they 
afford the fins a more than usually firm support. In these 
particulars of structure, as well as in the outward form, we 
discern a partaking of much of the character of the sub-families 
of Sharks and Skates, coupled with a departure from both in 
