CU FISHES—LEPIDOSTEID A. 
attempt to take food, although I have frequently seen them basking in a 
school of minnows, and have kept them inaquaria. 1 have never found 
any fish in the stomach of the Gar, and out of eight examined by Prof. 
Forbes, the stomachs of all but one were empty, that one containing a 
single craw-fish. 
The fishermen generally have a great dislike for this fish, destroying 
it without mercy when taken. Its flesh is said to be rank and tough, 
and it is seldom or never used for food. Even ‘the dogs will not eat it”, 
say some writers, but the average dog prefers a beef-bone even to Trout 
or Grayling. : 
This fish is interesting to the comparative anatomist from its combin- 
ing certain reptilian characters with the ordinary traits of fishes, and to 
the geologist, asit is intimately connected with certain Ganoid groups now 
extinct, and the study of its embryology, which no one has yet been able 
fully to trace, is expected to throw much light on the relations of the 
Ganoids to ordinary fishes and to Reptiles and Batrachia. The youngest 
specimens now known have the caudal fin developed as a second dorsal 
and anal, separated by a slender tail. 
Since the above was written, Prof. Alexander Agassiz has read a paper 
before the National Academy of Sciences, detailing his recent studies of 
the Embryology of this species. The following abstract of this paper is 
from Science News, vol. i, pp. 19-20. 
‘Some knowledge of the embryology of the Gar Pike (Lepidosteus) has long been 
needed, but no one has been able to raise the young, until Mr. Agassiz succeeded in doing 
so last summer. This fish is one of the few living survivors of those vast extinct orders 
of geologic ages; and it is thus especially important to compare its embryology with 
that of modern fishes, in the hope of revealing more fully the structure of the fossil 
races, and of throwing light upon modern questions of evolution. The Limulus, which 
holds a similar position among the crabs, has had its embryology worked out by Pack- 
ard, while Morse has studied the development of the brachiopods—an almost extinct 
group of mollusks dating back to the early rocks. 
The Gar Pike comes up the St. Lawrence in May, laying its eggs about the 20th, and 
then disappears. The eggs are large, viscous, stick fast in an isolated way to whatever 
they fall upon, and look much like those of toads, having a large outer membrane and 
asmall yolk. Mr. Agassiz sent his assistant, Mr. S. W. Garman, to obtain these eggs, 
and also arranged to have a series collected at all stages of growth and preserved. Art- 
ficial fecundation failed, but Mr. Garman brought to Cambridge about 500 naturally-laid 
eggs, of which all but 30 perished through mo!d. The young began to hatch in six days 
and Mr. Agassiz began his examinations, the misfortune to the eggs precluding any 
study previous to the birth of the young. Out of the 30 young hatched, 27 lived until 
July 15th, when they were as old as those observed by Prof. Wilder. Mr. Agassiz found 
that these little Gar Pikes were not so different from the young of the bony fishes as he 
had expected; the interesting development of the lung was not made out, but judging 
by external characters the difference is small. Connection with the Sharks appears in 
