150 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



Fingering the mass of wet weeds and its entangled 

 prisoners, I supposed I iiad gathered a full series of these 

 small fishes, but a careful inspection, as they circled about 

 the glass jar, revealed the fact that I had done more, for 

 one of the cjprinodonts was double-tailed. The vertebrae 

 branched, a half-dozen joints from their termination, 

 and each branch was well equipped with bony frame- 

 work, muscles, nerves, skin, fins, and all the require- 

 ments of a first-class tail. These deformed minnows, 

 like deformed trout, are quite common ; but never, I be- 

 lieve, have I seen any aberrant form so perfectly sym- 

 metrical as this. It swam with all the ease of normal 

 specimens, and quite as rapidly. 



All deformed fish that I have met with were healthy. 

 Their mishap resulted in no inconvenience, and every 

 humpbacked and crooked fish seemed to have as good 

 times as its associates ; a happy condition of affairs that 

 usually does not hold good with the higher vertebrates ; 

 for, with birds and mammals, unfortunates are often os- 

 tracized, and more frequently killed. 



Speaking of the " good times " enjoyed by fishes, 

 what of such an occurrence as the drawing of the seine ? 

 I have always insisted npon the fact that fishes were in- 

 telligent creatures ; probably more so than batrachians, 

 as a class ; and if so, may it not be that they suffer con- 

 siderable mental as well as physical discomfort when 

 tangled in the meshes of the net ? Logically, this should 

 be so; and when we look an angry pike or bass straight 

 in the eye, our faith in the logic is strengthened. When 

 either of these fish makes a lunge for j'our hand, and bites 

 you severely, theory vanishes, and you arc practically 



