Every part of the body is so fragile that perfect specimens are rare. The dorsal fin is readily torn, the bones are very feebly ossified, and the ligaments connecting the vertebræ are very loose and extensible, so that the body can be considerably stretched. "This loose connection of the parts of the body is found in numerous deep-sea fishes, and is merely the consequence of their withdrawal from the pressure of the water to which they are exposed in the depths inhabited by them. When within the limits of their natural haunts, the osseous, muscular, and fibrous parts of the body will have that solidity which is required for the rapid and powerful movements of a predatory fish. That the fishes of this genus (_Plagyodus_) belong to the most ferocious of the class is proved by their dentition and the contents of their stomach." (Günther.) Dr. Günther elsewhere observes: "From the stomach of one example have been taken several octopods, crustaceans, ascidians, a young _Brama_, twelve young boarfishes (_Capros_), a horse-mackerel, and one young of its own species." [Illustration: FIG. 96.—Lancet-fish, _Plagyodus ferox_ (Lowe). New York. ] The lancet-fish, _Plagyodus ferox_, is occasionally taken on either side of the Atlantic and in Japan. The handsaw-fish, called _Plagyodus æsculapius_, has been taken at Unalaska, off San Luis Obispo, and in Humboldt Bay. It does not seem to differ at all from _Plagyodus ferox_. The original type from Unalaska had in its stomach twenty-one lumpfishes (_Eumicrotremus spinosus_). This is the species described from Steller's manuscripts by Pallas under the name of _Plagyodus_. Another species, _Plagyodus borcalis_, is occasionally taken in the North Pacific. The _Evermannellidæ_ is a small family of small deep-sea fishes with large teeth, distensible muscles, and an extraordinary power of swallowing other fishes, scarcely surpassed by _Chiasmodon_ or _Saccopharynx_. _Evermannella_ (_Odontostomus_, the latter name preoccupied) and _Omosudis_ are the principal genera. The _Paralepidæ_ are reduced allies of _Plagyodus_, slender, silvery, with small fins and fang-like jaws. As in _Plagyodus_, the adipose fin is developed and there are small luminous dots. The species are few and mostly northern; one of them, _Sudis ringens_, is known only from a single specimen taken by the present writer from the stomach of a hake (_Merluccius productus_), the hake in turn swallowed whole by an albacore in the Santa Barbara Channel. The _Sudis_ had been devoured by the hake, the hake by the albacore, and the albacore taken on the hook before the feeble _Sudis_ had been digested. [Illustration: FIG. 97.—_Eurypholis sulcidens_ Pictet, restored. Family _Enchodontidæ_. Upper Cretaceous of Mt. Lebanon. (After Woodward, as _E. boissieri_.) ]