Malacopterous Abdominals. FISHES. Halecoids. 14,3 
lation. These fishes have also minute or rudimentary 
eyes, whose optical powers are very low ; a simple air- 
bladder, communicating with the intestinal canal; a 
caecal stomach ; pancreatic caeca ; and neither pseudo- 
branchiae, nor an adipose dorsal. Agassiz is inclined 
to consider the group as an aberrant Cyprinoid form, 
but reserves his final decision on its position until he 
has had an opportunity of investigating the embryology 
of the species composing it. 
In the recesses of the great cave of Kentucky, miles 
under ground, there are waters which no ray of sun- 
light ever reaches, and which are inhabited by blind 
insects and blind fishes. Dr. Wyman examined four- 
teen of these fishes {Amblyopsis spelceus), and in three 
or four of them only was he able to detect an e 3 'e-ball 
beneath the skin. These he dissected and found that 
the eye was wholly covered by areolar tissue, and was 
not organized to receive images of external objects. 
Slender optic nerves were detected, but he could not 
trace them to the optic lobes of the brain, though they 
doubtless proceeded from thence. The family com- 
prises two genera, Amblyopsis and Chologaster, the 
latter having like the former a guttural vent, but 
possessing eyes, and wanting ventrals. It is therefore 
an apodal, and furnishes one of many instances in zoo- 
logy of the way in which nature oversteps our artificial 
classification. 
The Malacopteres with abdominal ventrals which 
follow, belong mostly to the great Linntean genera, 
Clupea, Salmo, and Cyprinus, and are treated ot in 
much detail in the xvii., xviii., xx., and subsequent 
volumes of the Histoire des Poissons. They have 
cj'^cloid scales, a few only being scaleless ; and the 
bones of the head, cheeks, gill-covers, and shoulder, 
are generally destitute of serratures and spinous points. 
Family VIII.— CLUPEOIDS or HALECOIDS 
{Clupmdas). — Plate 3, figs. 13, 17. 
This, which includes the Herrings, may be considered 
as the most important, or at least as one of the most 
important families of fish, viewed in respect of the 
quantity of wholesome food they furnish to man. It 
may be characterized as follows : — Scaly abdominal 
Malacopteres having generally elongated and greatly 
compressed bodies, with thin, trenchant bellies most 
generally denticulated by a series of small dermal bones 
interposed between the points of each pair of ribs. 
Dorsal fin always solitary; ventrals situated near the 
middle of the body ; no spinous rays in any of the fins. 
In common with the Salmonoids they have moderately 
long premaxillaries which join with the maxillaries to 
form the upper border of the mouth ; the maxillaries 
are composed of three pieces, which separate readilv’. 
Gill-openings are on each side, large, joining the isthmus 
far forward between the limbs of the mandible; branchial 
rakers long and narrow, projecting towards the mouth; 
no pseudo-branchiae. Ribs long and slender, with thread- 
like epipleural spines diverging from them and from 
the vertebral apophj'ses. Stomach caecal, often fleshy ; 
pj’loric caeca numerous and long. Cva very numerous, 
and like the milts towards spawning time, occupying 
much space in the belly. Air-bladder always large 
and communicating through a slender tube with the 
point of the caecal cone of the stomach, or in some 
species with the dorsal side of that viscus or of the 
oesophagus ; rarely does the air-bladder divide poste- 
riorly into long conical processes ; its anterior end is 
always simple, generally pointed, and does not pass 
farther forward than the first spinal vertebra ; neither 
are there any ossicles connecting it with the acoustic 
capsules, as in the Cyprinoids, nor has it any communi- 
cation with the cavity of the skull. 
The Clupeoid or Halecoid family contains the following 
genera — Clupea; Sardinella; llarenyula ; Pellona ; Prisli- 
gasier; Rogenia; Clupeonia; Spratella; Kowala; Meletta; 
Alausa; Engraulis; Coilia; Odontognathus or Gnathohulus ; 
Chatoessus ; Amblogaster (Bleeker) ; Clupcichtliys (id.). 
This family is of great importance to man in all 
quarters of the world ; and, of its members, the 
Herring {Clupea harengus) merits the first place. For 
many centuries it has been the object of a great fishery 
in the English seas, but the records of it go no farther 
back than to Anglo-Saxon times, and the Welsh appel- 
ations of the fish, Fennog and Ysgadeyi, or the Gaelic, 
Sgadeii (pronounced Scatten) have not found a place 
in the commercial vocabulary. Neither have the Scan- 
dinavian terms. Sill or Slid, obtained general currency. 
Artedi derives the Latin name Harengus from the 
German Haring (in Dutch Haring). M. Valenciennes 
thinks that the origin of this German word may have 
been the Latin aresco, to diy, while Pennant attributes 
it to the German heer, a host, but neither etymology 
is satisfactory. The Roman word, Alec or Halec. 
denoting any small marine fishes that are salted, as 
well as a garum made from them, could, as used by 
Horace, Martial, and Plinj', have no reference to the 
northern Herring, which does not enter the Mediter- 
ranean, yet it was the ecclesiastical name for the latter 
at the time of the Norman conquest. In Doomsday 
Book, Dunwich is taxed at sexaginta millia alectum 
(sixty thousand Herrings), and the same word, Alec, 
occurs in the work on natural history written about the 
year 1 1 80 by the Abbess of Hildegard de Pinguia. The 
Anglo-Saxon Hcering, probably even more ancient than 
the German Haring, since it belongs to a maritime 
people, has kept its ground in England, with slightly 
modified spelling, and the Herring fishery can be traced 
to an earlier date in England than on the continenL 
In the charter of foundation granted to the monastery 
of Barking by Erkenwald, bishop of Loudon, circa a.d. 
680, allusion is made to the salting and smoking of 
Herrings ; the barrel is ordered to contain five hundred 
of them, and the levy of these fishes for the use of the 
monks in Lent is called herring-silver. Mention is 
likewise made of the Herring in the instructions for 
managing the revenues of the monastery' of Evesham 
in Worcestershire, founded in 700 by Bishop Edwin. 
Edward the Confessor bestowed on the Abbey of 
Fecamp a Cheshire salt-work to provide the monks 
with salt for their Herrings ; and at the time of the 
Conquest very numerous salt-pans in the Isle of Wight, 
and along the eastern coasts, were allotted to those 
who canned on the Herring fishery. Even at that 
early date, Yarmouth in Norfolk was the rendezvous of 
Herring fishers from various parts of England, France, 
