REGENT'S PARK 



1053 



in the sand, and are caught bt)th in the 

 nets and on the hnes. It is wiien re- 

 moving them from the nets at night that 

 the fishermen suiter most. Many experi- 

 ments have been made with W'eever 

 venom, which is as active as that in many 

 poisonous snakes. 



The Turbot may be taken as the type 

 of a very important group of fishes known, 

 from their shape, as fiat-fish. Our own 

 Turbtit, which is deep brown on one side 

 and white on the other, is covered with 

 rough tubercles and may thus be dis- 

 tinguished from the smooth Brill. Those 

 from the Black Sea, which I have often 

 eaten at Constantinople, have very large 

 tubercles, and I have noticed these also 

 on specimens in the fish-market at Dar- 

 danelles, which is supplied by local nets. 

 The Turbot has no scales. It feeds on 

 many small fishes, among them sand-eels 



and small fiat-fish — and, in fact, fish con- 

 stitutes its entire food. The spawning time 

 in our seas is between April and July, and 

 a female weighing twenty-one pounds 

 will lay as many as 10,000,000 eggs, the 

 majority of which, however, do not come 

 to maturity. That is why many fishes 

 have to lay such immense numbers of 

 eggs, seeing that, with all the destruction 

 done by storms and other fishes which 

 feed on spawn, the race would otherwise 

 die out — and Nature, as we know, is 

 jealous of the type. Like all other flat- 

 fishes, the baby Turbot has an eye on 

 both sides, and also swims in the upright 

 position. Then, after a few days, it 

 gradually heels over on one side, and the 

 second eye works round to the side 

 henceforth uppermost. It would be of no 

 use whatever on the side that lies in 

 the sand. 



NATURE ''IN TOWN" 



REGENT'S PARK 



By ARTHUR SCAMMELL 



With Photographs by W. J. VASEY 



WHEX the Sun god turns upon his 

 journey, and begins to look with 

 a little more of favour upon 

 this dejected latitude ; when germs, 

 many and various, begin to add cell to 

 cell and to put on the dignity of organ- 

 isms ; when bats asleep in the roofs of 

 barns stir in their dreams, and begin to 

 sliake the dust of winter from their wings, 

 and squirrels and dormice open their eyes 

 to take another look at the world ; then 

 man, too, arouses from his winter lethargy, 

 he has new thoughts, and is impelled to 

 different doings, and — amongst other en- 

 terprises — he takes a Sunday morning 

 walk. He is conscious, perhaps, only of 

 a desire for exercise, or he thinks his dog 

 Wf)uld be the better for a run. But the 

 man is greater tiian he knows : deep in 

 his subconscious self there lurks a spirit — 



wild, roving, romantic, artistic, what not — 

 which craves for life and colour and beauty, 

 and so instead of lying long in bed, smoking 

 in his back parlour, or walking the streets, 

 he goes into the park ; if he be a North 

 Londoner, into Regent's Park. 



One can but regret the name ; what is 

 there of beauty or worth that belongs to 

 the Regency ? The idea of antiquity is 

 quite cut off ; the period was not exactly 

 great in Art, and as for Nature — Nature 

 and the Regency ! — the force of incon- 

 gruity could no further go. 



But the man who goes to Regent's Park 

 to-day will see that Nature has forgiven 

 George, and thrown her green mantle 

 of protection over as much of his memory 

 as attaches to the place. Percliance in 

 some two thousantl years' time — sins and 

 follies and all else forgotten — the memory 



