The Primitives 



but firm holdfast, and, behind this casing, an immense yellow yolk 

 floated visibly. So elegant were these eggs that fishermen had long 

 known them as mermaid's purses and they would, indeed, have 

 made a charming addition to the accoutrements of these melan- 

 choly females. The tendrils at each of their four corners attached 

 them to rocks or wrecks at the sea bottom and their colour was 

 such that they must have been almost invisible. The large yolk 

 meant that the young were supplied with enough food for several 

 months growth and could emerge into the cold obscurity of their 

 native environment as miniature adults. There was no need for a 

 defenceless larval stage. And even the fact that there were not too 

 many eggs helped to protect them since there was never a dense 

 concentration of them on any stretch of the sea-bed and they did 

 not therefore attract the hordes of predators that sometimes erased 

 a race of herring. 



Jan came in contact with half a dozen species of skate, but most 

 of them were so similar to one another that he was unable to tell 

 them apart until after he had received a scientific training. There 

 was one, however, that was quite distinctive. Fishermen usually 

 referred to it as the grey skate or the ray. It was much smoother 

 than the others, its spines reduced to jutting dots and so dispersed 

 over the body that they often had to be looked for. It grew to a 

 great size, about six feet broad, and was shaped into a very precise 

 rhombpid with sharp corners. But it was the fish's belly that gave 

 it a name, a blue grey belly, smooth and slimy, but quite unlike 

 the deep whiteness found in all the other skates. 



Fishermen grouped most of the other common skates together, 

 calling them rokers or thorn backs - though the true thorn back 

 was only one among five. And Jan heard of other queer types, rays 

 that had stings in their tails like wasps, rays that generated elec- 

 tricity and stunned their enemies into inactivity with a shock, rays 

 that swam swiftly on their broad fins near the surface of the 

 Mediterranean and sucked their prey out of the plankton in the 

 same way as herrings, basking sharks and whalebone whales. When 

 attacked they descended heavily on their assailant, crushing him 



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