Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/633

 GARDONI GAR FISH 621 rians of Boston, and participated in the trans- formation of King's chapel from an Episcopal into a Unitarian Congregational church. III. John Sylvester John, an American clergyman, son of the preceding, born in Haverford West, South Wales, in June, 1775, died in Harrow- gate, England, July 29, 1830. He accompa- nied his father to the West Indies, and sub- sequently studied in Boston, and in England under the celebrated Dr. Parr, with whom he remained six years. Returning to America, he was in 1787 ordained by Bishop Provoost of New York. In 1805 he became rector of Trinity church, the chief Episcopal parish in Boston. He wrote the " Jacobiniad," a satire on the republican clubs of Boston. GARDONI, Italo, an Italian vocalist, born in 1820. He first appeared at the opera of Paris in 1844 as Earl Both well in Maria Stuart, and was applauded as almost equal to Mario, both in the sympathetic effect of his tenor voice and in his graceful and handsome per- son. In 1845 he^won new laurels as Don Sanche in Balfe's Etoile de Semite, and in 1846 in Flotow's Ame en peine. Since then he has been engaged at the Italian opera in Paris. GAR FISH, or Gar Pike (lepidosteus), a ganoid fish, belonging to the same order as the polyp- terns of Africa, the mud fish (amia) of America, and the sturgeon family; it is the only genus of its family, and there are more than 20 spe- cies, all American. As in other ganoids, the body is covered with smooth enamelled scales, of a rhombic form, arranged in oblique rows, and so hard that it is impossible to pierce them with a spear ; this enamel is like that of teeth, and the scales contain the fluorine and lacunae of ordinary bone structure. The internal skele- ton is bony ; the snout is elongated, varying in width according to the species; both jaws and nasal bone are covered with small teeth, with long and pointed ones along the edge; the teeth are in double rows of unequal size, the larger resembling those of reptiles, and the smaller fish-like, the front ones of the lower jaw being received into sheath-like cavities in the upper, as in the alligators ; their structure resembles that of the labyrinth odont reptiles, having processes of the pulp cavity radiating toward the circumference; the vertebras also present a reptilian arrangement in having ball- and-socket articulations, the anterior surface of each bone being convex and the posterior concave; this gives greater flexibility to the spine, and enables this genus (alone among fishes) to move the head independently of the trunk, and also to retain the posterior part of the body in a curved position. The gills on the four arches have a perfect bifoliate struc- ture-, and behind the last and the hyoid bone there is the usual fissure ; there is a respiratory opercular gill as well as a pseudohranchia, but no blow-hole; branchiostegal rays three, the membrane passing from side to side, undivided. The anterior edge of all the fins is protected by hard spiny scales, and all the fin rays are articulated; the dorsal and anal fins are far back, and nearly opposite one another; the caudal fin is abruptly truncated, and its rays are inserted partly at the end of and partly beneath the extremity of the spine. There are the usual numerous valves in the arterial bulb, no decussation of the optic nerves, and abdominal ventral fins; the stomach is con- tinued without caeca to a slender twice-folded intestine, which has a slightly developed spiral valve, but numerous pancreatic caeca ; the long air or swim bladder is muscular, freely sup- plied with blood from the aorta, divided into cells like the lung of a reptile by muscular bundles, and opening into the throat by a wide duct and long slit guarded by a sphincter mus- cle ; the ovaries are sacciform, with oviducts issuing from their middle. Gar fish are not uncommon in the western rivers and northern lakes communicating with the gulf of Mexico and the St. Lawrence, and probably every separate basin and watershed has its peculiar species. They frequent shallow, reedy, or grassy places, basking in the sun like the pike, and devouring living prey with great voracity. The manner of seizing prey differs from that usually observed in fishes, and resembles that of reptiles ; instead of taking their food at once with open mouth and swallowing it imme- diately, they approach it slily and sideways, and then, suddenly seizing the fish or other animal, hold it until by a series of movements it is placed in a proper position for being swal- lowed, in the manner of alligators and lizards ; the ball of food is also seen to distend the body as it passes downward, as in snakes. This reptilian fish, like the ichthyoid reptiles, is in the habit of approaching the surface of the water, and of apparently swallowing air ; at any rate, a large amount of air escapes from the mouth, most of which had probably been previously swallowed, and a part of which may have been secreted by the lung-like air bladder. As in the menobranchm and other fish-like salamanders, this air bladder doubt- less performs certain respiratory functions, and perhaps more than in the naked-skinned rep- tiles; at any rate gar pikes live longer out of water than fishes generally, and to a degree not explicable by any arrangement of the gills. The gar pike and the African polypterus (de- scribed below) are the only two existing genera of a type of sauroid fishes which were very numerous in the secondary geological epoch, extending also in diminished numbers through the palaeozoic age at a time when reptiles prop- er did not exist ; they are found from the low- er Silurian strata to the present time, grad- ually diminishing through the tertiary to the two existing genera ; they present one of the first steps in the geological succession of bony fishes, at a time when the ctenoids and cycloids had not appeared ; after the rhizodont reptiles and the common osseous fishes were created, the ganoids began to diminish. The common gar fish (L. osseus, Linn.), called also bony