Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1902 — Gar-fish the Original Armor Clads. [ARTICLE]

Gar-fish the Original Armor Clads.

The gar fish, the killing of a big specimen of which in the river here was previously mentioned, are peculiar among all known fishes for their scales, or what answers to scales. If anyone tries to remove any of these scales they will find tha* to “scale” a gar is a bigger job than to “scale” a mountain. To get through their outer covering any tool less efficient than a can opener would be useless, and a good cold-chisel would be still more appropriate. They are in point of fact, the original armor-clads, and their scales are hard and thick and impenetrable almost as plates of steel. Geologists tell us that the gars are the sole modern survivors of the great and fierce race of armor-clad fishes that ruled the animal world, way back in the almost inconceivably distant times of the Devonian Period, or Age of Fishes.