PREFACE 



In the course of my work at the British Museum I am called 

 upon from time to time to supply answers to all kinds of strange 

 questions, some of them but remotely connected with fishes 

 themselves. How fast does a fish swim? How many fishes are 

 there in the sea? Why does a fish die when taken from the 

 water? Where did fishes first come from? To what age does 

 the average fish live? Can a fish think or feel pain? (A favourite 

 query from the angler!) What is Rock Salmon? Are we 

 depleting the stocks of fishes in the sea by over-fishing? It is 

 in the hope that it will provide solutions to these and other 

 problems that the present work has been written, and, be- 

 lieving that it has been planned on more or less original lines, 

 I feel that no apology is needed for its publication. At the same 

 time, it is hoped that it will serve as more than a mere book of 

 reference — a storehouse of facts — and will prove of suflficient 

 interest to provide general reading, not only for the student of 

 fishes and the angler, but for all those who take an intelligent 

 interest in wild life. 



The customary method of dealing with any group of animals 

 is to begin with a recognised scheme of classification, and 

 to take up each of the smaller groups in turn, describing the 

 main distinguishing features of some of the better-known 

 members of each group, their mode of life, food, distribution, 

 and so on. Sometimes one or two chapters devoted to the 

 anatomy, development, etc., of the animals precede the more 

 general part, but, as a rule, these subjects are omitted altogether 

 or dismissed in a few lines. In the following pages I have tried 

 to give some idea of the story of fish life in all its varied aspects, 

 to show how the fishes "live and move and have their being." 

 In one chapter the manner in which they swim is considered; 

 in another their food; in another their breeding habits, their 

 development, and so on. Many diflferent kinds of fishes are 

 mentioned in illustration of one point or another, and some 

 inevitably figure in more than one chapter. Special stress has 

 been laid throughout on the evolutionary aspect of fish life, 

 the fishes themselves being regarded, not as museum specimens 

 or corpses on the fishmonger's slab, but as living organisms 



