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. THE FAMILY OF GLOBE FISH AND COFFERS. [Illustration: COFFRE OR OSTRACION.] This forms the first group of bony Fishes, which are distinguished by having the jaw attached to the cranium. In the Globe Fish the jaws have no apparent teeth, but they are furnished with a kind of beak in ivory, which represents them. In the group to which the Coffer Fish belong the nose terminates in a little mouth armed with true teeth. The first group includes the Globe-fish and the Diodons; in the second group we find the Coffers or Ostracions and the File-fish or Balistes. The skin of the Globe-fish bristles with small slightly projecting spines, which repel their enemies, and even wound the hand that would grasp them. They enjoy, besides, a strange power; they can inflate the lower part of their body, and give it an extension so great that it becomes like an inflated ball, in which the real shape of the Fish is lost. This result is obtained by the introduction of an immense quantity of air into the stomach when it wishes to ascend to the surface. The species of Globe-fish are numerous. Some of them are common in the Nile, where they are frequently left ashore during the annual inundations. There is a smooth Globe-fish known as the Moon-fish. Its compressed, spineless body, being very round, has been compared to a disk, and more poetically to the moon, to the great circular surface of which the dazzling silvery white disk bears some resemblance. But it is especially during the night that it justifies the name given to it. Then it shines brightly from its own phosphorescent light, at a little distance beneath the surface.