The natural history of fishes, amphibians, & reptiles, or monocardian animals

Abstract

CLASSIFICATION OF MONOCARDIAN ANIMALS. appearance they then exhibit, few will study, and still fewer will collect them.Hence the ichthyologist has much greater difficulties to contend with, in regard to materials, than he would experience in any other division, of the Vertebrata, while he finds himself totally at a loss for that information on their natural habits, " their lives, and their loves," which gives such a charm to the history of other animals, and excites such a popular interest with the generality of readers.But to these difficulties lying in the way of nearly all who write upon ichthyology, must be added others, more particularly applicable to our present undertaking.So little has been done towards a natural classification of fishes, more especially, that to attempt those rigorous definitions we have ventured upon in the class of birds, would be altogether impossible,The synthetic mode of investigating our subject is, therefore, that which we shall in many instances adopt. We shall set out, it is true, with the impression that the same general laws which regulate the forms of quadrupeds and birds will be equally apparent in monocardian animals.But this belief is not to be received as true, upon trust ; it is not to be unsupported by facts, or to remain as a mere assertion. We shall not, indeed, begin with analysing the smaller groups, and then gradually proceed to higher assemblages; for this is the analytical method of investigation-the very reverse of the synthetic : we shall, on the contrary, take a comprehensive view of those large assemblages, or groups, which nearly all our predecessors have agreed to keep distinct, however they may have differed in their subordinate details, or in the series wherein they have placed them. These we shall endeavour to define by their most prominent characteristics, and combine in such a way as that no palpable violation of nature should be committed.We shall then proceed to the results : it will then be seen how far this arrangement is in harmony with our previous disposition of the other Vertebrata, and how far it is supported by the analogies or resemblances that may be traced between them and the * The museum of the Zoological Society contains many striking illustrations of this fact. * This sense, indeed, is rendered almost unnecessary, for the great ma. jority of fishes swallow their food whole. This is one of the great characteristics of the fissirostral type of birds; and as the fishes represent the same type in the circle of the Vertebrata, we are accordingly prepared to expect such coincidence. EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF FISHES. FINS. * The only exception we are aware of at this moment, is a small species of blenny, the B. variabilis of Rafinesque, whose psctoralrays are all spinous. * See the Appendix, wherein these are described. VOL. I. C representing the hinder feet of four-footed animals, and the legs of birds. That they are less necessary, however, to the swimming motion of fishes, than either the dorsal or caudal, may be presumed from the fact, that in ...

Taxonomy of the Ocean triggerfish, Canthidermis maculata (Tetradontiformes, Balistidae) from the Indian coast

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Systematics of the subfamily Poeciliinae Bonaparte (Cyprinodontiformes: Poeciliidae), with an emphasis on the tribe Cnesterodontini Hubbs

“…Four years before Bonaparte, Agassiz (1834) had already separated the Cyprinodonts and the Cyprinidae, removing Anableps Scopoli, Poecilia, Lebias, Fundulus, Mollienesia, and Cyprinodon to a new family "Cyprinodontes". Swainson (1838) placed Poeciliinae as a subfamily of Cobitidae. Gill (1857) adopted the name Cyprinodontes and later (Gill, 1865;1894) employed Poeciliidae.…”

Paleocene fishes from Palenque, Chiapas, southeastern Mexico

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