JULY 161 



horse for its might, the hare for its speed, and the cater- 

 pillar for its greed ; yet had my pretty companion's wish 

 been gratified, had she been transformed before my 

 eyes to a fish she might have repented the vagueness 

 of her aspiration. 



For, mark you ! there are fish and fish. A midsummer 

 trout, gaily spangled and with changing sheen, is hard to 

 beat for beauty ; but suppose the nymph had become a 

 goby ! The gobies are a family far more numerous than 

 the trouts, and of descent quite as ancient, which counts 

 for something even in this democratic age ; but no elasti- 

 city of standard can admit them to rank as beautiful. 

 Out of three hundred or so species known to ichthyo- 

 logists, I am on intimate terms with one only, Gobius 

 niger, a little fellow three or four inches long when full 

 grown, delighting in the tumult of surf on rockbound 

 coasts. Like all his kin, he is specially equipped for 

 troubled waters, for his two ventral fins have grown 

 together into a suctorial disk, wherewith he can cling to 

 smooth surfaces in the strongest tides. 



I kept some of these gobies for a couple of years in an 

 aquarium, of which one of their peculiarities made them 

 very entertaining inmates. Normally a delicate, pearl- 

 tinted creature, semi-transparent in parts, the goby has 

 a curiously sympathetic complexion. At the sight of 

 food its head and whole body turn to an opaque inky 

 hue, out of which the eyes scintillate like sparks of green 



fire. 



It is clear that the maiden aforesaid would have found 



such a property very embarrassing in social life. Imagine 



one's dismay, after handing a misty dream of tulle and 



chiffon in to dinner, to find that the mere approach of a 



L 



