Page:An Introduction to the Study of Fishes.djvu/47

Rh Under the name of Pharyngognathi he combined fishes with the lower pharyngeals coalesced into one bone, viz. the Labroids, Chromides, and Scombresoces. The association of the third family with the two former seemed to himself a somewhat arbitrary proceeding; and it had to be abandoned again, when a number of fishes which cannot be separated from the Acanthopterygians, were found to possess the same united pharyngeals.

A more natural combination is the union of the Cod-fishes with the Flat-fishes into the order Anacanthini. Flat-fishes are in fact nothing but asymmetrical Cod-fishes. Müller separates them from the remaining Malacopterygians by the absence of a connecting duct between the air-bladder and oesophagus. However, it must be admitted that the examination of those fishes, and especially of the young stages, is not complete enough to raise the question beyond every doubt, whether the presence or absence of that duct is an absolutely distinctive character between Anacanths and Malacopterygians.

Many of the families established by Cuvier were re-examined and better defined by Müller, as may be seen from the following outline of his system:—