132 The Carnatic Carp. Chapt. X. 



him. Men do say that when he sees a fly in the air, he, to put it 

 nicely, blows a drop of water at it, with such force as to bring said 

 fly down as dead as Julius Caesar. Thereon he improves his 

 opportunities, and puts himself outside said fly. He, can make 

 due allowance also for the fly being in motion, and for the wind. 

 Chelmo rosirattis may have in the formation of his mouth a choke 

 bore, peculiar facilities for forcible and precise expectoration ; but all 

 fish can, and commonly do, perform that interesting operation more 

 or less. The whale takes in a huge gulp of water in its capacious 

 mouth, retains the medusce on which it feeds, and ejects the water 

 in the manner commonly called spouting. Most people will have 

 seen gold fish in an aquarium not only sucking in water, and 

 ejecting it by the gills as mentioned at page 30, but also ejecting 

 it by the mouth when they have taken in any food they do not 

 want to swallow. A grain of rice, for instance, may be seen blown 

 out of the mouth with considerable velocity. Have you never 

 found your worm or your spinning bait blown up your line well 

 clear of the fishes mouth ? How can you account for this except 

 by allowing that the fish has the power of blowing a thing out 

 of its mouth. If you watch very closely you will see how it is 

 done. The mouth having been opened to suck in either the water 

 the fish is to breathe from, or the food it is to feed on, it is closed 

 again while the gills and gill-covers are opened to let the water 

 pass out through the gills, while the oxygen is inhaled, and that 

 the food may be swallowed without water. If, when the water 

 lias been thus got rid of, it is found that the substance in the 

 mouth is not the food that is desired, but something to be rejected, 

 the mouth is again filled to the full with water by opening it, 

 and then by closing the gills first, and by compression of all the 

 flexible parts about the mouth, and partial closing of the orifice, 

 the water is violently squirted out. In short, the mouth of a 6ab 

 is a sort of suction pump capable of working both ways, by 

 alternate dilatation and compression of the mouth, the gills and 

 gill-covers, and tlie skin under the chin. If it were not so I do 

 not know how fish could apprehend their food. Tiny have no 

 hand in which to take the food and examine it before putting 

 it in their mouth, as briefly alluded to in the chapter on fly- 

 fishing for Mahseer. Their mouth is itself their hand in which 

 they lake and examine much that looks like fond, but which they 



