BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



had torn off its titbit, it good humoredly allowed 

 itself to be butted aside, the general effect being 

 of a single tiny tug striving to nose the lie de 

 France into mid-stream. Although I have seen 

 such fish as gar and barracuda thus attacked, I 

 have never seen them turn upon their midget 

 assailants and swallow them at a gulp as they could 

 do so easily. 



In the midst of one of these encounters, while 

 several score of the green-beaked parrots were 

 gathered about me, I saw the blue distance give 

 up another great form, and a six-foot tarpon, — 

 the king of the reef, — grew into solidity, swam 

 toward me, passed unnoticed through the school 

 of parrots, and almost immediately dissolved 

 again. 



More than ever before I was impressed with the 

 difference between the world of fishes and my own. 

 We both possess three dimensions, but in compari- 

 son with theirs, ours is a realm of but two and a 

 quarter. The great enameled forms before me 

 rose and fell, circled, approached and receded, all 

 with equal ease. We likewise can run to and fro, 

 but for the rest must leap and climb laboriously, 

 or fall with danger to life and limb. 



Within a few minutes of sighting the first of the 

 school I was completely puzzled by a remarkable 

 habit. A parrot would scull slowly up to a small 

 head or branch of coral, deliberately take it in his 

 mouth, and by some invisible muscular turbine 

 movement break it off. Moving away a few feet, 



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