174 ACANTHOPTERYGII. — LOPHIAD^. 
ANTENNARIUS. 
‘^fishes/’ as Professor Owen observes, perish 
when taken out of water, chiefly by the cohesion 
and desiccation of their fine vascular branchial 
processes, through which the blood is thereby 
prevented from passing.”^ Some fishes, as the 
Mackerel and Herring, are dead almost in an 
instant after exposure to the air ; others, as the 
Eel and Flat-fishes, survive a long time : in the 
former, the gill-openings are enormously large, 
in the latter, they are very small. The power 
of existing long out of water depends chiefly on 
mechanical modifications for detaining a quantity 
of that element in the branchial sacs,” and this 
is readily effected when the gill-aperture is small, 
for, if sufficient water can be retained to keep 
the gill-plates floating, the oxygen which is con- 
sumed by the capillary branchial circulation is 
^ Lectures on Comp. Anat. ii. 260. 
