6 THE SEA-SHORE 



Nearly all fishes are slippery, but the spotted 

 gunnell is the most slippery of all, for its whole 

 body is covered with such a thick coat of greasy 

 slime that it is really hardly possible to hold it. 



Sometimes the spotted gunnell is light brown 

 in colour, and sometimes it is dark brown. But 

 you can always tell it by its shape, which is very 

 much like that of an eel, for its body is long and 

 flat, and is of almost the same width the whole 

 way along, from the head to nearly the tip of the 

 tail. Then instead of having two fins on its back 

 quite separate from one another, as most fishes 

 have, the spotted gunnell has one very narrow 

 fin which runs the whole length of the body. So, 

 you see, it is very much like an eel indeed. But 

 you can always tell it by the row of black 

 spots, bordered with white, on the lower edge 

 of the back fin. When fully grown it is about 

 six inches long. 



PLATE III 



THE DRAGONET (i) 



You will not find this little fish in the rock-pools 

 nearly so often as the gobies and the gunnells, for 

 it generally lives at the bottom of the sea at some 

 little distance from the shore. But now and then 

 it comes swimming up as the tide rises, and gets 

 left behind as it falls again, so that for a few 

 hours, at any rate, it is obliged to stay in the 



