NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECDOTE.
VERTEBRATA.

CLASS V—PISCES.

Fishes. We now come to the fifth and last class of the
Vertebrata, a class so large that it is impossible to deal ade-
quately with it in a single volume of ordinary size, much less
in a single section of one treating of the whole of the verte-
brates. There are said to be 10,000 species, so that a book
which devoted one page to each would make an enormous vol-
ume. All that can be done here is to deal with a few of the
better known species, as far as possible selecting types of orders
without attempting to follow closely any classification. Giinther
divides the Fishes into six sub-classes, which are further ar-
ranged in thirteen orders. The first of these orders includes
the Sticklebacks, the Perches, the Mullets, the Gurnards, the
Mackerel and the Swordfish besides others. Of these we can
deal with but two or three.

The The Stickleback is associated with the earliest
Sticklebacks. efforts of the youthful angler, and most of us can
remember capturing specimens of some fresh-water variety, in
the days of childhood, and carrying them home in triumph in
a bottle. There are a number of species of the stickleback,
some living in fresh water and some being marine. They are
extremely voracious and it is a good job for a large number of
other living things that they are no bigger than they are. They
are also very pugnacious and fight among themselves with great
determination. The Stickleback is about an inch and a half

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