Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/109

Rh fins are always pointed, and the caudal forked; characters which indicate the power of swift progression through the water.

The colours of the Marine Breams are generally elegant without being showy; silvery grey or pearly white, varied occasionally with gilded or brassy reflections, and flushed with iridescent hues of rose-red, pale blue, green, and yellow, may be considered as characteristic of the Family. The fins, however, are destitute of colour, or are tinged only with dusky-brown.

From the structure of their teeth, it might be inferred that these fishes were predatory, and that their food often presented itself in a form which required great crushing and grinding force. And this is indeed the case, crustacea and mollusca, but especially the latter, affording them the main part of their sustenance; both of these classes comprising animals encased in crusts or shells, often of stone-like hardness. The common Gilt-head (Chrysophrys aurata, .), for example, is able to crush and grind to powder, with its powerful millstone-like teeth, the thick stony shells of the genera Turbo, Buccinum, and Trochus, the Periwinkles, Whelks, and Tops, of our rocky shores.

The Family is extensive, comprising, according to the latest estimate, two hundred and forty species, of which number nearly one-tenth belong to the European coasts; the rest are distributed over the shores of both hemispheres, their prevalence increasing as we approach the tropics.

In the larger Families of animals it is desirable to have subdivisions of a rank higher than that of genera; and there are always found on