390 Bass, Pike, and Perch 



" Where the water is so clear that with a little 

 help you can see everything just as if it were out 

 in the open air, bushes and vines and hedges ; 

 all sorts of waving plants, all made of seaweed 

 and coral, growing in the white sand ; and instead 

 of birds flying about among their branches, there 

 were little fishes of every color: canary-colored 

 fishes, fishes like robin-redbreasts, and others 

 which you might have thought were blue jays if 

 they had been up in the air instead of down in 

 the water." 



THE TURBOT 



(Balistes carolinensis) 



Batistes carolinensis. The Turbot. The fishes comprising the 

 family Balistidce are characterized by an ovate body, much com- 

 pressed ; small and low mouth, with separate incisor teeth ; eye 

 very high ; gill opening a small slit ; the absence of ventral 

 fins ; the dorsal fins widely separated, the first with but i to 3 

 spines. The turbot has a very deep compressed body, covered 

 with thick, rough plates or scales; head 3^; depth if; eye 

 small ; scales about 60 ; about 35 scales in an oblique series 

 from vent upward and forward ; D. Ill, 27 ; A. 25 ; third dorsal 

 spine stouter than the second and remote from it ; plates on 

 head similar to those on body; caudal lobes produced; soft 

 dorsal high ; ventral flaps large, supported by several pungent 

 spines ; lateral line very slender, undulating, and very crooked, 

 showing only when scales are dry; a groove before the eye; 

 larger plates behind the gill opening. 



The turbot, or leather-fish, belongs to the 

 family Balistidce, or trigger-fishes. It was first 



