310 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



The first I have described in the chapter on 

 Xesu7'us, the six and thirty little soles sticking up 

 all on edge, and in Hepatus, another surgeon, the 

 teeth are absurdly like hands, palms out, with the 

 fingers held close together. This fish is content 

 with alg£e, as I have never found a crab or other 

 marine animal in its food. The triggerfish are 

 armed with the dental chisels, Melichthys, the 

 beautiful black trigger, and the solitary, and 

 preternaturally solemn Pachygnathus. The front 

 view of these fish presents a horrible horse-like 

 appearance, a horse whose teeth are too promi- 

 nent and too many. 



The Stockades are a strange group, with teeth 

 which far excel any instrument of human manu- 

 facture. Details are for the ichthyologist, but con- 

 sider for a moment the moorish idol and the angel- 

 fish. The astonishingly beautiful white-striped 

 angelfish has a golid outside row of stockade teeth, 

 growing out of a thick, bony jaw. Back of the 

 front row are four or five layers of teeth, appear- 

 ing above the jaw in short lengths, looking, on 

 the whole, like a strip of ticker tape or pianola 

 music. But Pomacanthus %07iipectus, or more trip- 

 pingly on the tongue, orange-finned butterfly-fish, 

 has the most bizarre mouthful of any of my 

 Grazers. At first sight it seems to have a few, 

 large, curiously ribbed teeth, but on closer inspec- 

 tion these are seen to be composed of many, fine, 

 slender individual teeth, like glass splinters. 



With all the fish Grazers the price of such defi- 

 nite, abundant, non-motile food seems to be a stiff- 



