NONSUCH 



and evolution of a flounder — exciting because we 

 can offer no reason for it — is that although this 

 bottom adaptation has been going on steadily with- 

 out a break for fifty million years, it seems to come 

 to every baby flounder as a new idea — a thought 

 which has just occurred to him. He shows no hint 

 of not growing into a normal upright fish, until 

 suddenly all of him begins at once. And before this 

 there is a bit of prophetic internal anatomy which 

 foreshadows the change ; a bar of cartilage over one 

 eye is absorbed after being carefully laid down. 

 It reminds me of galloping policemen or a motor- 

 cycle squad which speeds down an avenue clearing 

 it for the passage of some important personage. 

 The cartilage bar out of the way, the path is clear 

 for the transformation. 



After a few weeks of life, feeding on minute 

 swimming animals, the young flounder or sole be- 

 gins to sag to one side, toward the right usually, 

 and now ensues the amazing thing that every tissue 

 and organ in the body begins to twist — bones, 

 nerves, muscles, everything. And as the little crea- 

 ture lies more and more flat, an astronomical 

 miracle (no other word fits it) occurs in its little 

 cosmos, a second great sun rises over the rim of its 

 new horizon — the right eye has left its habitual 

 bed and climbed aloft, aided by muscles and even 

 bones, and within a week's time has come to rest 

 close beside the other eye. The mouth twists slowly 

 day by day, until the fish has assumed a curious 

 wistful expression, and what is more to the point 



102 



