390 Bass, Pike, and Perch 



" Where the water is so clear that with a Httle 

 help you can see everything just as if it were out 

 in the open air, — bushes and vines and hedges; 

 all sorts of waving plants, all made of seaweed 

 and coral, growing in the white sand ; and instead 

 of birds flying about among their branches, there 

 were little fishes of every color: canary-colored 

 fishes, fishes like robin-redbreasts, and others 

 which you might have thought were blue jays if 

 they had been up in the air instead of down in 

 the water." 



THE TURBOT 



(^Balistes carolinensis) 



Balistes carolinensis. The Turbot. The fishes comprising the 

 family Balistidce are characterized by an ovate body, much com- 

 pressed ; small and low mouth, with separate incisor teeth ; eye 

 very high ; gill opening a small slit ; the absence of ventral 

 fins ; the dorsal fins widely separated, the first with but i to 3 

 spines. The turbot has a very deep compressed body, covered 

 with thick, rough plates or scales; head 3| ; depth i| ; eye 

 small; scales about 60; about 35 scales in an oblique series 

 from vent upward and forward ; D. Ill, 27 ; A. 25 ; third dorsal 

 spine stouter than the second and remote from it ; plates on 

 head similar to those on body ; caudal lobes produced ; soft 

 dorsal high ; ventral flaps large, supported by several pungent 

 spines ; lateral line very slender, undulating, and very crooked, 

 showing only when scales are dry ; a groove before the eye ; 

 larger plates behind the gill opening. 



The turbot, or leather-fish, belongs to the 

 family Balistidce, or trigger-fishes. It was first 



