178 THE SEA. 



just returned from the tropics, found the sword of one of these animals buried in its lower 

 timbers. They averred that to drive a pointed iron bolt of the same size to the same depth 

 would require eight or nine blows with a thirty-pound hammer. It was further evident 

 from the position of the weapon that the fish had followed the ship while under full sail ; 

 it had penetrated the metal sheathing and three-and-a-half inches of the timber. 



And now, before leaving the minor and intermediate types of ocean life for the monsters 

 of the deep, a few general observations may be permitted. Pliny described 94 species of 

 fish; Linnasus described 478; the scientists of to-day know upwards of 13,000, one-tenth 

 of which are fresh-water fish. The reader will then understand why only a few of the 

 more important, useful, or curious have been described in these pages. 



A hard man of science once described fish-life as " silent, monotonous, and joyless." 

 Modern science has disproved each and all of these statements. As regards the first, there 

 are species actually known which " indulge in jews'-harps, trumpets, and drums. 

 Musical fish are a fact of positive knowledge, for not only can they be heard in shoals 

 thrumming their jews'-harps in unison, but other kinds have been taken in the very act 

 of trumpeting and drumming." Bertram, as we have seen, speaks of the " death-chirp >: 

 of the captured herring. The application of the telephone has proved that a fish, placed 

 alone in some water, actually talked to itself ! Mr. S. E. Peal, in a letter to a scientific 

 journal, tells us of a large fish, Barles maerocephalus, which converses with a peculiar 

 " cluck," or persuasive sound, which may be heard as far as forty feet from the water. He 

 also mentions a bivalve of Eastern Assam which actually " sings loudly in concert." 



How fish-life could be called monotonous and joyless will puzzle any one who has 

 watched them in a large aquarium, where their every movement tells of pleasure, or at 

 least excitement. Imagine, then, their life in the ocean itself. All around them is life 

 life in constant activity. The ancients said, and Pliny assented to the dictum, that in the 

 water might be found anything or everything that was found out of it, and as much more 

 besides. Then there is the excitement of the chase, in which they may be either the 

 pursued or the pursuers. " Not only," said a writer in a leading daily journal, " can they 

 indulge themselves in running away from sharks, as we should do from tigers if they 

 swarmed in the streets, in contemplating the while the elephant of the seas sauntering 

 along through his domain, or finding diversion and instruction in the winged process of 

 the flying-fish or the tree-climbing of perch, the buffooneries of sun-fish and pipe-fish, the 

 cunning artifices of the ' angler-fish/ the electric propensities of some, the luminosity of 

 others, the venomous nature of these or the grotesque appearance of those not only is all the 

 variety of experience to be found on the earth to be found also in the water, but even 

 in a wider range and a greater diversity. The sea floor is strewn with marvels, and the rocks 

 are instinct with wonders." Fish-life is, then, full of excitement and interest. 



An accomplished ichthyologist, Mr. F. Francis, has stirred up the vexed question, 

 <c Do fish sleep ? " Only a very few fish, the dog-fish being one of the few excep- 

 tions, can close their eyes at all. Still, on the other hand, some human beings, and 

 notably infants, can sleep with one or both eyes open, while the hare is credited with being 

 able to take his nap in the latter condition. Fish would seem to require sleep from their 

 constant activity ; but in actual fact, no scientific watcher has yet caught one asleep. 



