138 GLAUCUS; OR, 
salmon or on trout. The victim is tired now; and 
slowly, and yet dexterously, his blind assailant is 
feeling and shifting along his side, till he reaches 
one end of him; and then the black lips expand, 
and slowly and surely the curved finger begins pack- 
ing him end-foremost down into the gullet, where 
he sinks, inch by inch, till the swelling which marks 
his place is lost among the coils, and he is probably 
macerated to a pulp long before he has reached the 
opposite extremity of his cave of doom. Once safe 
down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into 
a knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside 
him, motionless and blest.’ 
There ; we must come away now, for the tide is 
over our ankles; but touch, before you go, one of 
those little red mouths which peep out of the stone. 
A tiny jet of water shoots up almost into your face. 
1 Certain Parisian zoologists have done me the honour to hint 
that this description was a play of fancy. I can only answer, that 
I saw it with my own eyes in my own aquarium. I am not, | 
hope, in the habit of drawing on my fancy in the presence of 
infinitely more marvellous Nature. Truth is quite strange enough 
to be interesting without lies. 
