Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/11



OME readers of may never have seen gar-pikes, or even heard of them. The word does not occur in some of the dictionaries, and the animals themselves are found alive only in certain parts of the world. So, before telling what gar-pikes do, it is necessary to explain what they are.



In the first place, the gar-pike is not a weapon, but a vertebrated animal. The vertebrates include all animals having a spine or back-bone made up of a series of segments or vertebræ. But this common definition is not wholly accurate. For the very young of man and monkeys, quadrupeds and birds, reptiles and fishes, have no skeleton at all; and some of the lowest fishes, the Amphioxus and the lamprey-eels, have no bones. So the vertebrates are now said to include all animals having a longitudinal axis or spine (whether membrane, cartilage, or bone) separating an upper or dorsal cavity, containing the spinal cord and brain, from a lower or ventral cavity, containing