284 ACANTHOPT. THE WRISTED FAMILY. 



corresponding to a long and curved bone upon the 

 cranium. These fish swim with difficulty ; and so 

 are usually found upon the sand, or hid beneath the 

 mud, allowing these their streamers to float freely 

 above them, thereby attracting the fish, upon which 

 they dart, when thus enticed within their reach. 

 In this humble art consists all the vaunted skill of 

 these Anglers of the fishy race. 



(Sp. 80.) L. piscatorius, (PI. XXI.) The 

 Fishing-frog, or Angler, is perhaps more celebrated 

 than any other fish ; and were we to believe certain 

 Naturalists, its instincts and formation alike com- 

 bine to render it a creature equally anomalous and 

 astonishing. According to them, its cunning is 

 singular and diversified, fishing both with the line 

 and the net, capturing its prey in great sacs con- 

 nected with its gills, as well as with its filamentous 

 streamers or tentacula. It is the enormously dis- 

 proportioned size of the head, and its extraordinary 

 shape, thence resulting, which has made the Angler 

 the subject of so many strange stories. The head 

 is flat and of prodigious breadth, so that its surface 

 exceeds that of all the rest of the body. Its enor- 

 mous mouth opens at the anterior part ; and its gills, 

 instead of sloping away, and attaching themselves 

 under the throat, are prolonged behind the pectoral 

 fins, and open in a kind of arm-pit, by a narrow 

 orifice ; so that these fins, which are moreover placed 

 on a kind of prolonged arm, appear almost to issue 

 from the gill-sacs. When to this we add the nu- 

 merous filaments or tentacula which surround this* 



