BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



was the more difficult because it was intermittent, 

 — there being several oblique angles at which the 

 fish vanished from view altogether. This occurred 

 most often when seen from a sharp angle below, 

 whence, to the fish, invisibility would be of the 

 greatest value. When once their silvery sides 

 flashed out however, there was no need of any 

 special observation on the part of the attacking 

 fish, — they were in such tremendous numbers that 

 any rush, however blind, in their direction must 

 reach all that any hungry pursuer could swal- 

 low. 



The technical part of my brain told me that 

 these uncountable schools were Jenkinsia and 

 Atherina, — herringlets and silversides. But after 

 an hour or more of diving among them I began to 

 cease thinking of them as individual fish. They 

 became mere aquatic corpuscles, submarine atoms, 

 whose structure was elemental, with movements 

 governed by some mechanical interaction of cosmic 

 influences. I secured one as I ascended the ladder, 

 and examined it as I warmed up. 



It was a silverside {Atherina), sl female, and I 

 later found that it contained one hundred and 

 sixty -three eggs about to be laid, and four hundred 

 of a later batch. Nothing atomic about this, — 

 it was an individual with a brain, eyes and muscles, 

 and it had eighteen tiny crustaceans in its stomach ; 

 it had suffered adventure — ^a patch of scales and 

 half a fin were missing; it had hopes of a mate, and 

 expected to be able to deposit its eggs and leave 



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