ROOM IV.] 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
51 
Wall Cases 20—26. Anomalous Fish. 
Case 20. Spiny globe fish, which have a beak like a parrot; they 
have the faculty of dilating their stomach with air, hence their name. 
Case 21. The batistes or file fish, which have small teeth, and are 
covered with a hard skin; leather jackets, with a more flexible less 
armed skin. 
Case 22. The coffin fishes, covered with a hard horny skin formed 
of six or eight-sided plates, forming an even coat; the sturgeons, from 
Europe and America. 
Cases 23, 24. The sharks; the saw-fishes, with their elongated 
head furnished with teeth on each side. 
Cases 25, 26. The rays, the torpedoes, and the sting rays. 
On the Tops of the Cases, 
Different kinds of fish which are too large to be arranged in the 
proper places in the Cases. 
Large shad with a long dorsal ray, from Mexico ; a maigre from 
Guernsey; a sword-fish, from Margate; a flying sword-fish, from the 
Indian Ocean, with two other pikes; and belonging to the same kind 
of fish, one which has been forced through the oak timber of a ship. 
These fish swim so rapidly, that if they come against a ship they pierce 
it. A conger, an angel fish, a short-nosed bony pike from North Ame¬ 
rica; sharks; the nose of various large saw-fishes; a piraruca, from 
British Guiana; a sturgeon, and a large sting ray. 
The Tables 1—12. Insects. 
Tables 1—8. The Coleopterous Insects or Beetles; the leaf-beetle 
or mormolyce, from Java; the burying beetle ( Necrophorus ); the stag- 
beetle, with its long jaw^s like the horns of deer; the searabeeus, which 
incloses its eggs in balls of dung, and was esteemed sacred by the 
Egyptians; the rhinoceros, elephant, and bubaline beetles, which have 
the front of the head or the front of the thorax produced into variously 
shaped horns or humps. 
Table 2. The buprestidae, with their metallic colours, the hard win^s 
of which are often used to ornament dresses in the place of spangles ; 
the lantern spring-jack ( Elater noctilucus ), with a spot on each side of 
the thorax, luminous when living; the various kinds of glow-worms 
curculians, or long-nosed beetles, as the diamond beetle, from Brazils • 
the prionii, w 7 hich have very long jaw T s, and live chiefly in old wood * 
the harlequin beetle wfith its very long fore legs. 
Table 3. The false kangaroo beetles (Sagra), with their very large 
hinder legs; and the different kinds of tortoise beetles, and lady-birds, 
some of which are very brilliant. 
The earwigs, with their beautiful fan-like wings; the cockroaches 
which have been introduced into England; the prayin^ insects* 
(Mantis ) and some of their eggs, which are formed into° different 
shaped masses; the walking-sticks, some of which are provided with 
large fan-like wings, but the greater part are destitute of them and look 
like fragments of stick. 
