A Natural History for Young People: Our Animal Friends in Their Native Homes / including mammals, birds and fishes

by Phebe Westcott Humphreys

CHIMERA

This curious member of the Sturgeon family resembles the Sturgeon only in the formation of the gills. Otherwise it seems distinct not only from the rest of the family with free gills, but from all other Fishes. Many strange tales have been told of it in the past; and the Arctic Chimera is the monster of mythological antiquity, which used to be represented with the body of a Goat, the head of a Lion, the tail of a Dragon, and a gaping throat that vomited flames. At a later period it was described simply as a monstrous Fish with a Lion’s head. But now that it has become better known, we are inclined to ridicule these old-time tales that surrounded this Fish with a fascinating mystery.

But even now the strange form of the Chimera, the manner in which it moves, the different parts of its hideous mouth and nose, its mode of showing its teeth, its ape-like contortions and grimaces, its long tail which acts with such rapidity—reminding one of a Reptile—all work on the imagination with a horrible fascination, and we can understand how it influenced the superstitious fishermen of the past who noticed its queer antics in the sea, and were too cautious to give it close study.

This strange Fish is usually from five to six feet in length, of a silver color, spotted with brown. The largest variety, known as the Arctic, or the Monster Chimera, inhabits the North Sea, and another species, which closely resembles it, but is somewhat smaller, known as the Antarctic Chimera, is found in the southern hemisphere.

THE OSSEOUS OR BONY FISHES.

Some Naturalists claim that these are the only inhabitants of the water that should be called Fishes—that the Cetacea or the Whale family are simply huge beasts that have taken up their abode in the ocean, and that the cartilagenous Fishes form an amphibious band by themselves.

Others have classed the whole of these three great groups under the name of Fishes. But modern Scientists have settled upon the classification which has been carried out in this little Natural History—the Cetacea are placed among the Mammals and kept entirely distinct from the Fishes (none of which feed and care for their young in the same manner as the Mammals); and the great tribe of Fishes are now divided into two groups of cartilaginous and osseous Fishes, with their numerous sub-divisions into families and species.

We have studied the curious families of the cartilaginous Fishes and now we find more familiar varieties of our well-known Fishes among the families of bony Fishes, although even in this division some very rare and wonderful specimens are found.

The history of any one family of the bony Fishes very closely resembles all the rest—they breathe air and water through the gills. They live by devouring such Fish and the animal life of the great waters as their mouth is capable of admitting. They propagate not by bringing forth their young alive, like the Mammals and a few of the cartilaginous Fishes, nor by distinct eggs, like the remainder of the latter class, but by spawn, as their roe is called, which is made up of hundreds, and in some instances hundreds of thousands of tiny eggs.

The bones of these Fishes also makes them distinct from all others. They have the appearance of being solid, but when examined more closely they are found to be hollow and filled with a substance less oily than marrow. These bones are very numerous and pointed and to them the muscles are fixed which move the different parts of the body.