Page:An Introduction to the Study of Fishes.djvu/44

20 throughout the whole class, and their relative importance has been duly weighed and understood. Though Linnæus had formed a category of "Amphibia nantes" for fishes with a cartilaginous skeleton, which should coincide with Cuvier's "Poissons Cartilagineux," he had failed to understand the very nature of cartilage, apparently comprising by this term any skeletal framework of less firmity than ordinary bone. Hence he considered Lophius, Cyclopterus, Syngnathus to be cartilaginous fishes. Adopting the position and development of the ventral fins as a highly important character, he was obliged to associate fishes with rudimentary and inconspicuous ventral fins, like Trichiurus, Xiphias, etc., with the true Eels. The important category of a "family" appears now in Cuvier's system fully established as that intermediate between genus and order. Important changes in Cuvier's system have been made and proposed by his successors, but in the main it is still that of the present day.

Cuvier had extended his researches beyond the living forms, into the field of palæontology; he was the first to observe the close resemblance of the scales of the fossil Palæoniscus to those of the living Polypterus and Lepidosteus, the prolongation and identity of structure of the upper caudal lobe in Palæoniscus and the Sturgeons, the presence of peculiar "fulcra" on the anterior margin of the dorsal fin in Palæoniscus and Lepidosteus: inferring from these facts that that fossil genus was allied either to the Sturgeons or to Lepidosteus. But it did not occur to him that there was a close relationship between those recent fishes. Lepidosteus and, with it, the fossil genus remained in his system a member of the order of Malacopterygii abdominales.

It was left to (born 1807, died 1873) to point out the importance of the character of the structure of the scales, and to open a path towards the knowledge of a whole new sub-class of fishes, the Ganoidei.