258 STKUCTURE AND FOOD OF SUN-FISH. 



will perceive, the siin-fisli is sun-like. If they wish to 

 make a portrait of him they have only to utilize the inner 

 surface of their own hand, imagine all the fingers taken 

 clean away from the palm of the hand, draw a fish's eye 

 on the skin at the base of the fore-finger, and a pectoral 

 .fin in the centre of the palm, erect the thumb as high as 

 possible, and imagine another thumb to match affixed 

 o^jposite the upper one to the lower part of the palm 

 directly, and you have a fancy portrait of this curious 

 sun-fish, fins and all. 



The sun-fish has an exceedingly small mouth, and the 

 jaws, when cut out, resemble the jaws of a turtle. 

 He has no teeth ; instead of teeth I find simple pro- 

 minences like coarse sand-paper ; the edges are covered 

 with a hard cutting enamel, and the lower jaw is shaped 

 like the beak of a turtle ; the stomach is rather large, 

 the intestines very long and much convoluted, the 

 liver not very large in proportion to the fish. All 

 curious and rare fish seem to make a point of being 

 caught before their dinner, as it is very rare indeed to 

 find anything in their stomachs, and this was the case, 

 as usual, with the sun-fish. 1 cannot, however, help 

 fancvin^ that from the structure of his teeth and in- 

 testines he is a vegetable feeder. The eye is very large, 

 and from the size of the muscles attached to it, it must 

 be capable of quick motion. I fancy he must live amongst 

 the dense forests of seaweeds that grow in the submarine 

 valleys in the tropical seas — a kind of subaqueous 

 hippopotamus. He may also eat corallines. Mr. Couch 

 mentions a case of a fragment of coralline being found 

 in the mouth of a specimen caught off the Scilly 

 Islands. In September, 18(57, I found the claw of a 

 minute lobster in the stomach of a sun-fish. Sun-fish 

 generally appear upon our coast in the summer months ; 



