Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/218

204 and roots and half-decayed leaves of sub-aquatic vegetation; and even, as is asserted, (though probably on insufficient evidence,) swallowing the ooze and sludge deposited at the bottom of ponds, for the sake of the organic matter contained in it. The typical genera are well furnished for the bruising and grinding down of tough vegetable tissues, possessing in the armed pharynx a powerful instrument of mastication, which we shall presently describe more fully. The majority of species have thick fleshy lips, sometimes furnished with short cirri or tentacles, and a thick, soft appendage to the palate, well known by the erroneous appellation of "Carp's tongue," which being freely supplied with nerves of sensation, is doubtless endowed with a delicate perception.

Mr. Swainson sees an analogy between this Family and that of the Eels, which he instances in the following particulars: the possession of thick, fleshy fins; the mucous slime with which their bodies are clothed; the absence or paucity of proper teeth, and the vegetable nature of the diet. The resemblance, however, appears to us but slight, and counterbalanced by much more numerous and more important points of dissimilarity:—while in one of the particulars enumerated the analogy fails egregiously; for the Eels are as indiscriminately voracious as the Carps are abstemious.

This is the most numerous in species of all the Families of Fishes, containing, according to Prince Bonaparte's late Conspectus, the immense number of seven hundred and twenty-three. This, however, includes the Loaches of the Old and of the New World, of which that