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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Natural History of Fishes, Particularly Their Structure and Economical Uses

The Natural History of Fishes, Particularly Their Structure and Economical Uses

Bushnan, J. Stevenson

Paperback

General World History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1154794717
ISBN13: 9781154794717
Publisher: General Books
Pages: 84
Weight: 0.30
Height: 0.20 Width: 9.01 Depth: 5.98
Language: English
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 edition. Excerpt: ...perhaps conduce rather to depress the belly than to effect any other specific purpose: they may likewise co-operate with the pectoral fins in preserving the balance, as well as between one side of the body and the other, as between its anterior and posterior portion. In some fishes, as the lump (Cyclopterus lumpus), there is formed of the united ventral fins a kind of sucker, by means of n which the animal adheres strongly to any thing in contact with it; hut to this subject we shall hare to recur presently. The deficiency of ventral fins, as well in so many fishes, as in the cetaceous tribes in general, would go to prove that their use is not, at any rate, a very important one. The remaining two fins which we have still to notice, stand in a different direction from those we have already illustrated, being perpendicular to the centre of the body, and are employed as balances only, not as organs of progression, or of sinking and rising; they are, nevertheless, in some species, developed to an extraordinary extent. The dorsal fin is of very varied form, either composed of a few spines only, or it is continued for the whole length of the fish; it is either single, double, or triple; and it possesses a degree of consistence so very different in different species, as to have given occasion, first to Ray and Artedi, and more recently to the late illustrious Naturalist, the Baron Cuvier, to constitute this a leading distinction between two of the largest families of fishes--the Malacopterygii, or those in which this organ is comparatively soft, and the Acanthopterygii, or those in which it is hard and spinous. Generally speaking, it is most fully developed in those fishes which inhabit the most stormy seas, while those which are found in comparatively...

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