Fig. 504.—Ogcocephalus vespertilio (L.). Florida.
The common sea-bat, or diablo, of the West Indies, Ogcocephalus vespertilio, is dusky in color with the belly coppery red. It reaches the length of a foot. The angling spine is very short, hidden under the long stiff process of the snout. Farther north occurs the short-nosed batfish, Ogcocephalus radiatus, very similar, but with the nostril process, or snout, blunt and short. Zalieutes elater, with a large black eye-like spot on each side of the back, is found on the west coast of Mexico. In deeper water are species of Halieutichthys in the West Indies and of Halieutæa in Japan. Dibranchus atlanticus has the gills reduced to two pairs. Malthopsis consists of small species, with the rostrum prominent, like a bishop's miter. Two species are found in the Pacific, Malthopsis mitrata in Hawaii and Malthopsis tiarella in Japan.
And with these dainty freaks of the sea, the results of centuries on centuries of specialization, degeneration, and adaptation, we close the long roll-call of the fishes, living and dead. And in their long genealogy is enfolded the genealogy of men and beasts and birds and reptiles and of all other back-boned animals of whom the fish-like forms are at once the ancestors, the cousins, and the younger brothers. When the fishes of the Devonian age came out upon the land, the potentiality of the higher methods of life first became manifest. With the new conditions, more varied and more exacting, higher and more varied specialization was demanded, and, in response to these new conditions, from a fish-like stock have arisen all the birds and beasts and men that have dwelt upon the earth.
Fig. 505.—Batfish, Ogcocephalus vespertilio (L.). Florida.
Fig. 506.—Batfish, Ogcocephalus vespertilio (Linnæus). Carolina Coast.
THE END.