OF THE SOUTH SEAS 275 



world, the adaptation to environment, and the desire for 

 love and admiration in the male and female. 



These things from the deep seem hardly fish. They 

 are bits of the sunset, fragments of a mosaic. Futuris- 

 tic pictures ; anything but our sodden, gray, or watery- 

 hued fish of temperate climes. Some are as green as 

 the hills of Erin, others as blue as the sky, as crimson 

 as blood, as yellovi^ as the flag of China. They are cut 

 by nature in many patterns, round, or sectional, like a 

 piece of pie, triangular, almost square ; some with a back 

 fin that floats out a foot or two behind. 



They are grotesque, alarming, apparently the design 

 of a joker. But tread not on the domain of the scien- 

 tist, for he will prove to you that each separate queerness 

 is only a trick of nature to fit its owner to the neces- 

 sities of his habitat. The parrot-fish are screamingly 

 fantastic. There are not even in the warm Cahfornia 

 or Florida waters the duplicates of these rainbow fish. 

 The Garibaldi perch and the electric fish excite interest 

 at Santa Catalina, but here are a hundred marvels, and 

 if I wish I can see them all as they swim in and out of 

 the coral caverns within the lagoon. 



Porcupine fish are a delicacy, squid are esteemed, and 

 even the devilfish is on the tables, hideous, repellent, 

 slimy, horned, and tentacled; not mighty enough to 

 crush out the life of the fisher, as was the horrific crea- 

 ture in Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea," whom his 

 hero fought, yet menacing even when dead. It is a 

 frightful figure in its aspect of hatred and ugliness, but 

 good to eat. See that fat Tahitian thrust his finger into 

 the sides of the octopus to plumb its cooking quahties. 

 It is quickly sold. 



