DAYS ON THE NEPIGON. 



My eyes! What a beauty! Purple and 

 gold and silver, resplendent as a tropical sun- 

 set. Weight? Tut, tut. These brawny fel- 

 lows speak for themselves, though they be 

 dead. They carry their own true tales. He 

 was gratifyingly large, two feet long, built in 

 proportion, and handsome as ever flickered 

 a fin, believe me. 



He was a stalwart, solid-meated, game; no 

 liver-fed sluggard ; no hothouse product, tame 

 and insipid, that waited like a prize pig for his 

 food to be brought to him; but an active 

 sportsman, a warrior bold, that had con- 

 ditioned himself by buffeting the riffs and 

 currents and battling among the eddies for his 

 morning meals, and now it seems almost a sin 

 that so beautiful a creature should be sacrificed 

 upon the altar of man's love of sport, though 

 every element of that sport was honest and 

 gentle and manly. 



Storming the rapids or circling the shal- 

 lows and ripples, he is truly one of the princes 

 of swimming creatures, and you would know 

 from the color and cut of his clothes and his 

 34 



