FROM remote ages the sea has been 

 peopled with fishes, some of which 

 at a later period found their way 

 first into rivers and thence into lakes. 

 The sea, however, the home of all life, 

 was the cradle of the race, and although 

 most of the salt-water fishes which we 

 know to-day have been developed from 

 forms long since vanished in the mists 

 of antiquity, a few, like the Port Jackson 

 Shark, retain the general characteristics of 

 very ancient types encountered only in 

 the fossil strata, and more familiar to the 

 hammer of the geologist than to the nets 

 of the fisherman. 



Even the fishmonger's shop, in which 

 not one in a thousand of the known kinds 

 of sea fish is ever seen, will reveal at a 



glance the curious differences in shape, 

 size and colour. True, the largest and 

 the smallest fishes in our seas — the bask- 

 ing Shark, which grows as long as forty 

 feet, and the little Sucker, which never 

 exceeds four inches — are never seen in the 

 fish market. Yet there is a wide differ- 

 ence in size between the great Cod or 

 Halibut and the tiny Whitebait (really 

 young Sprats and Herrings) with which 

 we often see it garnished. In the familiar 

 Mackerel, Plaice, Dory and Garfish, too, 

 we have four widely divergent types of 

 living fishes, of which the first-named may 

 be regarded as the most usual form of fish 

 — the typical, torpedo-shaped, silvery, 

 forked-tailed animal with scales and fins 

 and gills. All fishes have scales and gills. 



:iPP^' 



PLAICE. 

 1004 



