has taken their likenesses by the dozen. A great
many of them are anything but attractive, and I
don't think there will be much to regret if the
silurus can never be induced to live in England.
We have neither room nor food for him, so let
him stay where he is. Besides, what is the use
of angling for such a fish? Who in his senses
can want to catch a great brute of a thing,
as heavy as a jackass, and capable of eating
children, as the silurus is said repeatedly to
have done? There is one comfort, however,
the silurus, if it really lived formerly in our
rivers, as it is said to have done, left of its own
accord, and that is a pretty good proof that
the locality did not agree with it, and is not
likely to do so.

Though beauty is not the rule among these
Eastern silurians, there are exceptions. Some
of them are of a lovely grass-green colour—as
the arius, for instance; the salmon gold of one
species, the pale green of another, and the gold
green of the batrachocephalus, being equally
fine; the small-headed pseudarius is also a fine
specimen. Many are stippled with gold about
the head; the ariodes is very elegantly marked
in this way. The beard, too, is of a beautiful
hue. The dorsal fin, with its remarkably strong
spine in front, and sloping sharply backward
towards the tail, with the three fins in a line
beneath, give some of these fish a very striking
appearance. One species (the
hexanematrichthys) is barred from head to tail with what
seem to be sunbeams.

Some of the silurians are remarkably hump-
backed. The reader is doubtless familiar
with the appearance of certain consequential-
looking fish,* as round as a ball and as deep as
they are long. But from these downward in
successive descent to the straight-backed eel,
there is always something like symmetry; the
great spinal curvature rises and falls with an
equable sweep. This is not the case with the
silurian humpbacks, for they look as if the spine
had been badly broken in two places. There is
one species (the bagrichthys) in which this
singular feature is developed to an extraordinary
degree, and is, moreover, coupled with other
peculiarities which make it, in many respects,
one of the strangest-looking of fish. The back
rises almost perpendicularly from the head; and
from the highest point of this hump issues a
dorsal fin, which seems especially designed to
get this unhappy-looking animal into difficulties,
being free and seven inches long, only an inch
wide at the base, and narrowing so rapidly,
that through the greater part of its length it
is not more than an inch in width, looking on
the whole somewhat like a half quill trimmed
very close. From the hinder part of this strange
fin towards the tail, the back is concave, which
gives it a singularly weak and ugly look. In
this hollow is laid a long oval mass, or fin, of
fat (adipeuse), which not only fills up the vacuity,
but even gives the outline a convex form; as
it is distinctly seen to be superimposed, a dead
load laid upon the backbone, it is an additional
ugliness. From each point of the tail waves a
narrow streamer of cartilage, not much thicker
than packthread, and nearly three inches long.
All this, with its peculiar claret colour, looking
in places as if it had been washed out, its queer
little short thick head, and the oval fin in the
middle of its body, give it a remarkably odd
look.
* Such as the ephippus, platax, &c.

Another very unusual feature in some of them
(as the leiocassis, &c.) is a narrow straight bar
of a bright gold colour, running from the head
to the tail, where it suddenly bends upward to
the end of the backbone. The beard, too, is
singularly developed in some of these fish. The
wallago has streamers extending from the upper
jaw, half way to the tail; they are not thicker
at the thickest part than whipcord, and taper
away till they become mere threads. One
little fellow (a silurichthys) has a long beard
waving from both upper and lower jaws, and
one small silurodes has a beard almost as
long as himself, projecting from his lower jaws,
and arching away high over his back in graceful
waves towards his tail: while in the hemibagrius
the beard is actually as long as the creature to
which it appertains. Some of these beards, as
that of the plotosus, for instance, are most
delicately coloured; in the bagarius, the cartilages
of which it is formed are very elegant. Indeed,
this fish possesses some peculiarly attractive
features; the height and bold sweep backward
of its dorsal fin, its compact but slender form
and elegant head, and the tail arched like a
lancet-headed window, striking the eye of the
most unobservant.

The silurians do not contribute much to
the luxuries of the table. The natives and
Chinese prize them because they afford cheap
and nutritious food, but they are not sought
after by those who can afford to live well. Some
river species are eaten by the Europeans, but
there is no mania for them. The plotosi are
liked, but their spines are apt to give very
troublesome wounds to those who dress them,
often occasioning locked-jaw and abscesses; the
natives attribute this to the cartilage being
poisonous, but it is due to its brittleness, as
the spines, which are very sharp, penetrate
deep, and being very fragile, easily break off and
remain in the wound.

There is little in the cyprinæ to detain
us very long. Any person who wishes to see
particularly stuck-up fish, is recommended to
look at the likenesses of some of the puntius
race; little, petulant creatures, as deep as they
are long, and into which one would think the
spirits of so many defunct parish beadles must
have migrated.

Until Dr. Bleeker took up the subject, only
thirty-four species of cyprinoids were known.
He has raised the number to a hundred and
nineteen; but his discoveries, though deeply
interesting to the naturalist, have contributed
little to benefit the human race, for these fish
are almost useless as food; some of them being
too rare, others too small. The yellow-finned