Scales
the imbricated plates on the exterior of certain animals, as the pangolins or scaly ant eaters, serpents and other reptiles, and especially especially fishes.
Fishes are sometimes classed, in accordance with the structure of their scales, into Ctenoid, Ganoid, Cycloid, and Placoid. The term scale is applied also, in botany, to a small rudimentary or metamorphosed leaf scale-like in form and often in arrangement, constituting the covering of the leaf buds of the deciduous SCALLOP trees in cold climates, the involucrum of the Compositæ, the bracts of catkins, etc.