The Geographical Distribution of Animals, Volume 2 / With a study of the relations of living and extinct faunas as elucidating the past changes of the Earth's surface

by Alfred Russel Wallace

The genera are:—

Polypterus (1 sp.), the Nile and rivers of West Africa; Calamoichthys (1 sp.), Old Calabar.

Family 95.—LEPIDOSTEIDÆ. (1 Genus, 3 Species.)

"Fresh-water fishes, with ganoid scales, and dorsal and anal fins composed of articulated rays."

Distribution.—The genus Lepidosteus, the Garfishes or Bony Pikes, inhabits North America to Mexico and Cuba.

Order II.—CHONDROSTEI.

"Sub-cartilaginous scaleless fishes with heterocercal tail, the skin with osseous bucklers or naked."

Family 96.—ACCIPENSERIDÆ. (2 Genera, 20 Species.)

"Marine or fresh-water fishes with osseous bucklers and inferior mouth."

Distribution.—Temperate and Arctic regions of the northern hemisphere. Accipenser (19 sp.), comprising the Sturgeons, has the distribution of the family; most of the species are marine, but some are confined to the Caspian and Black Seas and the great American lakes with the rivers flowing into them, while the Danube, Mississippi, and Columbia River have peculiar species. The other genus, Scaphirhynchus (1 sp.), is confined to the Mississippi and its tributaries.