The Days of a Man 



C1907 



Northern 



fishes 



develop 



more 



segments 



Quaint 

 diversions 



appear that new types mostly originate along tropical 

 shores and reefs, locaUties most favorable to fish life 

 but where at the same time individuals are subject to 

 the severest competition, while those fornis which ex- 

 tend their range into cooler waters, into rivers, 

 or into the open seas degenerate, having smaller 

 vertebrse and the fin rays which spring from them 

 less differentiated and more numerous. Among 

 highly specialized fishes like perch and bass, the num- 

 ber twenty-four seems to have been ancestral, those 

 with twenty-seven to thirty having lapsed from type 

 in default of sharp selection. Antecedent to the Ter- 

 tiary Age, however, before bass and the like existed, 

 all fishes had numerous vertebrae, reduction in num- 

 ber going with other specialization. A recent study 

 by C. L. Hubbs, one of my students, shows that 

 within the species parallel differences occur. Yet it 

 should be explained that among eels and eel-like forms 

 these generalizations do not hold, for with them 

 specialization tends in the direction of body flexi- 

 bility. 



As a relief from weighty "matters of the law," 

 and as a joy to myself through giving pleasure to a 

 child, I now for a time spent a half hour daily in 

 entertaining Eric by making wash paintings in color 

 of animals, real or imaginary — and largely imag- 

 inary even if real — accompanied by little jingles of 

 rhyme : 



Jack, the Rabbit, 



Has the habit, 



When you look him in the face, 



He is in another place. 



i: 250 3 



