FISHES. 325 



the most important factors in their arrangements being 

 doubtless those sudden changes in temperature to which, 

 though in a less degree than the atmosphere, the sea is 

 subject. 



Lastly, a word must be said of the habitat of our com- 

 moner fishes — of the forms that inhabit sandy, and those 

 others that frequent rocky, coasts. In the 

 ordinary course it is found that the two divi- 

 sions rarely overlap. Thus, the flat-fish and silver whiting 

 keep to the sand, while the conger, wrasses, and pouting 

 are found among the rocks. ]\Iost fishes within twenty 

 miles of the coast dwell near the bottom, in the lowest 

 third, at any rate, of the total depth, though the garfishes, 

 mackerel, herrings, pollack, mullet, bass, and some others, 

 even some of the flat-fish and eels, are found, more par- 

 ticularly of an evening, feeding or gambolling at the 

 surface. As a rule, however, the flat-fish lie in the sand, 

 only the eyes, which have an extraordinary range of vision, 

 projecting above it. 



It will now be necessary to enumerate the orders, 

 families, genera, and species of our British fishes, with 

 some remarks on their characters and life-history ; but it 

 must be prefaced in apology for the meagreness of some 

 of the accounts that the scheme of the present little 

 work excluded sternly anything in the shape of anecdote, 

 and the whole has necessarily been drawn up in the spirit 

 of condensation. 



