JOHN DORY. 227 



In addition to the fishes mentioned in the last three 

 chapters, which practical experience has proved may 

 be more or less readily acclimatised in marine 

 aquaria, there are many others, and the list is 

 being added to almost every week. The conger-eel 

 (Conger vulgaris) ; John dory (Zeus faber), a lovely 

 fish when alive, whose common name is corrupted 

 from the French jaime doree, an apt allusion to 

 its burnished golden body ; the fork-beard (Raniceps 

 trifurcatus) ; the singular gar or guard fishes (Belonc 

 vulgaris), whose slender elongated, silvery body 

 terminates in formidable jaws, armed with sharp 

 teeth ; the mud fish a singular illustration of the 

 " missing links" between amphibians and fishes ; the 

 lovely and graceful smelts ; -sting rays ; sur-mullets ,- 

 skates of all kinds, &c., are among the commoner 

 kinds exhibited alive. The study of marine fishes is 

 now removed from the mere examination of dried 

 skins or shrunk specimens preserved in spirits, to where 

 they can be seen in their natural element, graceful as 

 butterflies in their motions, and many of them hardly 

 less brilliantly coloured. There we can watch out 

 every stage of their life-history, from the extrusion of 

 the spawn to the adult fish, and can understand from 

 their habits of life the meaning of many a structural 

 peculiarity, many a tint and spot and ornament, which 

 before we should have rashly assigned to some freak 

 of Almighty Power, unaware that we were then exer- 

 cising a mental act that savours of blasphemy ! 



Q 2 



