Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/545

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ODD FORMS AMONG FISHES.
527

and by means of this apparatus they give violent shocks to animals with which they come in contact.

Hardly less strange than the rays are those animal structures

Fig. 4. Torpedo. b, brain; eo, eye and optic nerve; el, electric organs; sn, spinal nerves; sm, spinal marrow; pg, pneumogastric nerves going to the electric organs; pg’, branch of the preceding; g, gills.

which remind us somewhat of the rays on the one hand, and the sharks on the other, but which differ from both in several important respects, but especially in having a very long depressed and bony

Fig. 5. Mackerel-Shark (Lamna punctata, Storer).

snout, armed on each side with spines implanted like teeth, the whole constituting a most formidable weapon. These are the sawfishes (Fig. 7), which attain a length of fifteen feet or more.