EDIBLE SPECIES 23 



therefore, are practically innumerable and incalculable 

 both in time and space, since the adult fish represents 

 the present and the egg the future. 



The first problem to be solved by these gigantic 

 cohorts is the discovery of food. It must be abundant, 

 for their jaws are innumerable ; it must be substantial, for 

 they are voracious. Look closely at a tunny, a mackerel, a 

 hake. The long, compressed body indicates strength and 

 speed ; a fish is nothing but a bundle of powerful muscles, 

 whose work demands an enormous expenditure of energy, 

 or, in other words, almost continuous alimentation. 

 The fact is that in the open sea a thousand dangers 

 beset the fish, and as it is shortsighted on account of 

 the spherical crystalline lens of the eye, which limits the 

 accommodation of the sight to a dozen yards, it can only 

 escape by means of its strength and the rapidity of its 

 caudal appendage. 1 



1 The means of attack of the fish, in addition to its rapidity of 

 movement, consist of its mobile jaws and its teeth, which are 

 generally soldered to the bone or fixed in the mucous membrane of 

 the mouth. The means of defence are flight, the production of 

 venomous integumentary secretions, the use of the teeth or of 

 spines, and mimetic colouring, as in the flat-fish, the pattern of the 

 back resembling the ground on which they swim, etc. [All fish, 

 like nearly all animals, have assumed a protective colouring or 

 shading, in that they are dark on the back and light on the belly, 

 so that when seen sideways with the light falling from above they are 

 scarcely visible at any distance, appearing as flat shadows. If a shoal 

 of gregarious fish be carefully watched it will be seen that as they 

 turn some of the fish will make sudden rushes, turning over as they do 

 so, when the flash of the belly is very conspicuous. This manoeuvre 

 is manifestly of use in keeping the shoal together. TRANS.] The 

 fry of the sole and the young sole often swallow prey considerably 

 longer than themselves. [The young sole has an enormous stomach, 

 the remains of the yolk-sac.] "The complete deglutition often 

 lasts more than an hour, and while watching from the bows of the 

 ferry-boat the soles passing to and fro constantly presented, as un- 

 deniable evidence of their appetite, the more or less prominent 



