Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/14

4 the figure. The body is an elongated cylinder covered with hard and shining scales closely joined, and leaving as vulnerable points only the throat and gills, the eyes, and the parts just under the pectoral fins. The tail is moderate in size and rounded, the longest rays a little above the middle, so that it is not quite symmetrical. Upon the hinder part of the back is the dorsal fin, and below the dorsal an anal fin, immediately in front of which is the vent or outlet of the alimentary canal. The paired fins, pectoral and ventral, occupy the places natural to them as representatives of the anterior and posterior limbs of salamanders and alligators.

The length of the head varies in the different species, but, whether longer or shorter, the jaws are furnished with rows of very sharp and closely-set teeth. The apparent form of these teeth is a simple elongated cone; but it has been shown by Prof. Jeffries Wyman that their surface is really deeply folded, so that a cross-section resembles that of the teeth of the curious fossil Batrachians, called, for that reason, Labyrinthodonts. The eyes are of moderate size. As with ordinary fishes, the ears do not appear externally. The nostrils are two pair of small holes at the tip of the snout, communicating with an olfactory sac on each side; the lining of this sac presents one median longitudinal and many transverse folds.

The genus Lepidosteus, according to Huxley, has not been found earlier than the Tertiary rocks; although the family Lepidosteidæ is represented by more or less numerous genera as far back as the Carboniferous and perhaps (by Cheirolepis) in the Devonian.

True gar-pikes are not found in Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia, or in South America; while in North America they seem to be nearly confined to the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and the Great Lakes.

Prof. Poey has also recorded the existence of a gar-pike in Cuba, a fact which is interesting, not as an indication of "manifest destiny," but as a memorial of the supposed ancient connection between the West India Islands and our continent. None have been found in saltwater, and the writer has no knowledge as to how far they enter the mixed water at the mouth of the Mississippi; but their tenacity of life encourages the belief that they might possibly adapt themselves to the ocean. Their introduction into New England waters would afford to Eastern zoölogists the much-desired opportunity of studying their development, of which nothing whatever is known.

We must now inquire whether there are more than one species of Lepidosteus.

Unfortunately, this question involves several others. For the genus Lepidosteus, established by Lacepede for the single species