=Order Lyomeri, or Gulpers.=—Still more aberrent and in many respects extraordinary are the eels of the order or suborder _Lyomeri_ (λυός, loose; μέρος, part), known as "Gulpers." These are degenerate forms, possibly degraded from some conger-like type, but characterized by an extreme looseness of structure unique among fishes. The gill-arches are reduced to five small bars of bone, not attached to the skull, the palatopterygoid arch is wholly wanting, the premaxillaries are wanting, as in all true eels, and the maxillaries loosely joined to the skull. The symplectic bone is wanting, and the lower jaw is so hinged to the skull that it swings freely in various directions. In place of the lateral line are singular appendages. Dr. Gill says of these fishes: "The entire organization is peculiar to the extent of anomaly, and our old conceptions of the characteristics of a fish require to be modified in the light of our knowledge of such strange beings." Special features are the extraordinary size of the mouth, which has a cavity larger than that of the rest of the body, the insertion of the very small eye at the tip of the snout, and the relative length of the tail. The whole substance is excessively fragile as usual with animals living in great depths and the color is jet black. Three species have been described, and these have been placed in two families, _Saccopharyngidæ_, with the trunk (gill-opening to the vent) much longer than the head, and _Eurypharyngidæ_, with the trunk very short, much shorter than the head. The best-known species is the pelican eel (_Eurypharynx pelacanoides_), of the coast of Morocco, described by Vaillant in 1882. _Gastrostomus bairdi_, very much like it, occurs in the great depths under the Gulf Stream. So fragile and so easily distorted are these fishes that it is possible that all three are really the same species, for which the oldest name would be _Saccopharynx ampullaceus_. Of this form four specimens have been taken in the Atlantic, one of them six feet long, carried to the surface through having swallowed fishes too large to be controlled. To be carried above its depth in a struggle with its prey is one of the greatest dangers to which the abysmal fishes are subject.