290 TEE FISHING FROG. 



speaks of three that he saw in the Atlantic — one so large 

 that it seemed fifty or sixty feet wide ; they all three carried 

 each on his horns a white fish about half a yard long, which 

 appeared to be stationed there on duty as sentinels, to keep 

 watch for the safety of the " devils," and to guide their 

 movements: that these sentinels passed over their backs 

 when they rose too high, and repassed under them until 

 they descended deeper, disappearing and being seen no 

 more for a time, but reappearing and resuming their post as 

 sentinels when the fish again ascended to the surface. 



Among other "queer " fish, is the Fishing Frog, or Ang- 

 ler, belonging to the " Wristed " family (so named from the 

 prolongation of the wrist-bones, forming a kind of arm, sup- 

 porting the pectoral fin on a kind of hand), and one of the 

 most extraordinary and repulsive-looking animals that 

 inhabit the deep. 



Let the reader imagine a gigantic tadpole blown out to 

 the size of a porpoise, with an immense head, and a mouth 

 extending on either side far beyond the width of the body, 

 opening to view a capacious den, shagged throughout with 

 hooked and mobile teeth, a triple tier in the upper, and 

 an equal number in the lower jaw, the palate, tongue^ 

 fauces, pharynx, and far down the throat, glistening with a 

 like display of 'ivory fangs; unfishy orbs, resembling those 

 of the " star-gazer " (the " priest-fish," so named from the 

 whites of its eyes, looking constantly heavenward), planted 

 high in the forehead ; a scaleless skin, which is reeking 

 cold, and clammy ; its surface, from near the tail to the cor- 

 ners of the mouth, as crawling with long wriggling caruncu- 

 lated (fleshy) appendages, like so many worms in agony; 

 the flesh "boggy" to the touch, save where it is padded out 

 with an enormously extended liver, or just over the branchial 

 (apertures for the passage of water from the gills) cavity ; 

 a pantry constantly replenished with provisions; add to all 

 these a large pair of Caliban-hand-like fins, planted close 



