HOW FISHES FEED. 91 



curious bizarre type. One or two of the most 

 wonderful of these latter forms are sketched in 

 the accompanying figures (fig. 8). The mormyrus, 

 it should be remarked, was well-known to the 

 ancient Egyptians, and occurs not infrequently 

 in the hieroglyphic figures. It was regarded as 

 an object of veneration. The Egyptians, Dr 

 Griinther tells us, " abstained from eating it 

 because it was one of three different kinds of 

 fishes accused of having devoured a member of 

 the body of Osiris, which, therefore, Isis was 

 unable to recover when she collected the rest of 

 the scattered members of her husband." Since, 

 then, there has arisen a people who knew not 

 Osiris and his mournful history, and these eat 

 the mormyrus with great relish, pronouncing its 

 flesh most excellent eating. 



Some fish procure their food by stealth, and 

 the craft and cunning displayed in a study of 

 these instances is something diabolical, and 

 hardly to have been expected at first sight in 

 animals of this low grade. Take the cunning of 

 the skate, for example. The skate is a cousin of 

 the shark, but the shark is what we may call a 

 round fish, moving swiftly by virtue of a violent 

 side to side sculling action of the tail, whilst the 

 skate may properly be called a "flat" fish. Its 

 change of form has been brought about by the 

 enormous development of the pectoral fins, which 

 form huge fleshy lobes on each side of the body, 

 tapering off at their outer margins to a thin 

 edge. These great fins have superseded the tail, 

 and propel the body by a series of undulatory 

 movements, resembling those of the lateral fins 



