1902 Six Uncommon British Sea- Fish 9 



angler-fish — by the way, as the writer informed Professor 

 Boulenger at South Kensington at the time, the specimen 

 in question was trawled in the vicinity of Plymouth — but, 

 unable to leave well alone, he added a description according 

 to which it appeared that the fish lies in wait for its victims 

 with jaws distended, as displayed at the fishmonger's, and 

 the impetus of swimming fishes subsequently, by some mar- 

 vellous and inscrutable process best known to the author of 

 the statement, carried them within that gaping cavern. 

 It must, however, be clear to any swimmer that such an 

 account lacks correctness, for the angler is a monster of 

 such sluggish deportment that the tiny fishes that form 

 its meals would have ample time to back water and turn tail 

 on that forbidding gullet before the disappointed giant had 

 a chance of seizing them. No ; the angler just lurks against 

 a carefully chosen background of seaweed, jaws closed and 

 rod in play, and as soon as a small fish comes along with its 

 fatal curiosity to investigate the strange object dangling in 

 the water, the mouth opens of a sudden, and the inrush of 

 water impels the small fish to a closer acquaintance with the 

 object of its research. Not at all times of life is the angler 

 so sluggish in its movements, for in the larval stage — fishes 

 go through metamorphoses, like insects, after leaving the 

 Qg^, and in some cases the larval fish differs from the adult 

 form no less than the caterpillar from the butterfly — it is a 

 free and rapid swimmer. In the evening of its life, however, 

 it is but a poor performer in mid water, though it can, with 

 the aid of its hand-like pectoral fins (compare those in the 

 gurnards), walk slowly on the bottom of the sea like a frog 

 on the mud. 



A very different manner of fish is the Rabbit-fish {Chimcera 

 monstrosa) of northern seas, or " cat " of the Mediterranean, 

 and not the least singular fact about it is this wide distribu- 

 tion in cold and comparatively hot seas. For the rest, 

 this chimaera is in appearance not much less eccentric than 

 the fabled combination of lion, goat, and dragon of the 

 Greeks, and it lurks so persistently in the deepest waters, 

 coming near the surface only at night, and to the shallows 

 only to breed, that very little is known of its habits beyond 

 the alleged fact — unsubstantiated, I believe, by autopsy — 



