FLOUNDERS ARE WONDERFUL 



miracles, the others may be summed up in a crude 

 paraphrasing of a famous couplet: 



There are nine and sixty ways in the 



evolution maze 

 And part of every one of them is right. 



Anyway, the skates and rays settled themselves 

 comfortably on the bottom of the sea, some time 

 during the Jurassic period, and developed all sorts 

 of new arrangements. It is not pleasant to try to 

 breathe water when you are lying with your face 

 in the mud and sand, so skates have developed a 

 hole or spiracle on the upper side of their head, 

 which they can open at will and draw water through, 

 instead of through the mouth; and they have not 

 only flattened, but spread out sideways into thin 

 wings, with which they flap, bird-like, on their way 

 through life. 



Fifty million years passed, and then, just as in 

 the movies, came a day when the ancestors of all 

 flounders became dissatisfied with their place in the 

 world. The mid-water pickings were not what they 

 used to be before the influx of all the modern fish, 

 and the oldest sole could remember the time when — 

 but then came an urge, " Go down, young sole, go 

 down." And the young soles and flounders, which 

 were then just ordinary fish, swam down. They were 

 rather deep-keeled, not round and tubby like the 

 early sharks, and they peered down around them- 

 selves like a fat man trying to see if his shoe-lace is 

 untied. And they saw the skates and rays having 



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