3 o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the cheap and nasty ; and in my next paper I am going to return to 

 the easily intelligible, and not wander from it again. The reader who 

 has been at the pains of wading through this month's paper, shall be 

 rewarded in the next one by seeing how beautifully what has been 

 developed in this tedious way can be applied to the ascertainment of 

 the rules of scientific reasoning. 



We have, hitherto, not crossed the threshold of scientific logic. 

 It is certainly important to know how to make our ideas clear, but 

 they may be ever so clear without being true. How to make them 

 so, we have next to study. How to give birth to those vital and pro- 

 creative ideas which multiply into a thousand forms and diffuse them- 

 selves everywhere, advancing civilization and making the dignity of 

 man, is an art not yet reduced to rules, but of the secret of which the 

 history of science affords some hints. 



-+++- 



THE ARCHER-FISHES. 1 



By E. SAUVAGE. 



IN the elegance and variety of their colors, in the splendor and 

 brilliancy of the tints with which they have been adorned by 

 Nature, marine animals have no reason to envy the inhabitants of 

 air ; and if in the tropical regions of Africa and America the forests 

 are embellished by the presence of innumerable birds of gorgeous 

 plumage, the Indian Ocean and the Antilles Sea possess countless 

 lesions of fishes that are more beautiful still, whose scales flash with 

 all the colors of the metals and precious stones, while a thousand 

 varied ornamentations are traced in vivid colors on the general tone. 



The animals known to our colonists on the Antilles Islands under 

 the names of Demoiselles, Portugais, Handoulieres, are, in this re- 

 spect, not inferior to the most richly-adorned of fishes. Accustomed 

 to keep near the shore, amid the rocks and in shallow waters, swim- 

 ming swiftly and ever moving, they are constantly reflecting the 

 splendid colors with which they are decorated. Rose-color, purple, 

 azure, velvety-black, milk-white, are gorgeously displayed on their 

 surface, in the form of bands, streaks, curved lines running in various 

 directions, rings, ocellated spots. These colors stand out boldly on 

 the surface of the body, which furnishes a background of the richest 

 nacreous tints of gold and silver, or of polished steel. 



In all of these fishes the body is compressed, and the vertical fins 

 are covered with scales, whence the name Sqicamipinnes, by which 

 they are known to naturalists. The shape of the body is sometimes 

 peculiar, and the buffalo or cow fish of the Malays is one of the most 



1 Translated from the French, by J. Fitzgerald, A. 11. 



