NONSUCH 



hide for the remaining month of the mackerels' 

 stay. 



There are about thirty species of Little Arrows 

 in the world. They are eminently successful fishlets 

 and abound in every favorable bit of shallow 

 tropical water from Bermuda to Panama, Norway 

 to South Africa, Japan and the East Indies to Aus- 

 tralia. In Haiti my motorboat sometimes passed 

 through a school for a mile or more without a break 

 — a solid, concentrated mass of silvery motes slid- 

 ing along below the surface, sometimes many yards 

 deep. When we consider the millions of fish in one 

 such school, the thought of the numbers of Aiherina 

 in all seven seas becomes comparable only with as- 

 tronomical figures. The genus Atherina has a fairly 

 respectable pedigree, for we have found a large- 

 headed fossil member, very slightly changed from 

 the Arrows of today, which swam and doubtless 

 schooled fifty millions of years ago. 



If we were Atherinas, and living in a world whose 

 men and birds and fish preferred Atherina to 

 other diet, it would seem much better if we skulked 

 alone or with a single fish friend near the crevices 

 of rocks and the kindly sanctuary of seaweed, in- 

 stead of advertising our abundance by foregather- 

 ing in conspicuous multitudes. Unlike muskoxen, 

 whose strongest defenders face outwards in a hol- 

 low square, the outermost Little Arrow is only 

 nearest to the maw of the first approaching enemy. 

 If, again, I was one of a great school, my dominant 

 instinct would be to bore through to the very heart, 



244. 



