Order Pediculati: The Anglers 543 



The skin is smooth, with dermal flaps about the head. Over the 

 mouth, like a fishing-rod, hangs the first dorsal spine with a lure 

 at the tip. The fishes lie flat on the bottom with sluggish move- 

 ments except for the convulsive snap of the jaws. It has been 

 denied that the bait serves to attract small fishes to their destruc- 

 tion, but the current belief that it does so is certainly plausible. 

 As to this Dr. Gill observes: 



"The name 'angler' is derived from the supposition that by 

 means of the foremost dorsal spine, which bears leaf -like tags, 

 or appendages, at the end, it angles for fishes itself, lying upon 

 the ground with its head somewhat upraised. According to 

 Mr. S. Kent, however, this is at most only partly the case: 'That 

 the fish deliberately uses this structure as a fisherman does his 

 rod and line for the alluring and capture of other fish is a matter 

 of tradition handed down to us from the time of Pliny and 

 Aristotle, and which scarcely any authority since their time 

 has ventured to gainsay. Nevertheless, like many of the de- 

 lightful natural-history romances bequeathed to us by the 

 ancient philosophers, this one of the angler-fish will have to be 

 relegated to the limbo of disproved fiction. The plain and 

 certain ground of facts, all the same, has frequently more start- 

 ling revelations in store for us than the most fervid imagina- 

 tions of philosophers, and that this assertion holds good in the 

 case now under consideration must undoubtedly be admitted. 

 It is here proposed to show, in fact, that the angler is one of the 

 most interesting examples upon which Nature has exercised her 

 handicraft, in the direction of concealing the identity of her 

 protege 1 , such ingenuity being sometimes utilized with the object 

 of protecting the organism from the attacks of other animals, or, 

 as illustrated in the present instance, for the purpose of en- 

 abling it by stealth to obtain prey which it lacks the agility to 

 hunt down after the manner of ordinary carnivorous fishes. 

 To recognize the several details here described, it will not suffice 

 to refer to examples simply, and usually most atrociously 

 stuffed, nor even to those preserved in spirit, in which all the 

 life colors are more or less completely obliterated and the vari- 

 ous membranous appendages shrunk up and distorted. In 

 place ot this, a healthy, living example fresh from the sea, or, 

 better still, acclimatized in the tanks of an aquarium, must be 



