416 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
water of a moderate depth with a sandy bottom. It buries itself 
in the sand and keeps in hiding in order more suddenly to attack 
its prey, which consists of small fishes and crustaceans.” The hiding 
habit, however, appears to be sometimes deviated from; according to 
Day (1880), “in the Westminster aquarium these fish do not show 
any propensity to conceal themselves under the sand.” Besides, it 
is not always the dorsal surface that is uppermost. According to 
A. Briot (1903), one of their favorite attitudes in the aquarium is 
repose on their sides with the outer opercle upraised and the spine 
nearly vertical. Perhaps in both cases the sand in the aquariums 
may have been too compact or otherwise unsuitable. The lesser 
weever is universally conceded to mostly hide itself in the sand, 
leaving little more than the eyes and parts on the same level ex- 
posed. 
As to swimming, according to R. Schmidtlein (1879), weevers 
do not show much more endurance than their relatives, the star- 
gazers. Their movements are to be sure more active and, on ac- 
count of the flexibility of the body, may almost be called winding, 
yet one falls to the bottom almost as awkwardly as the other, as soon 
as the muscles are at rest. 
Sometimes, Schmidtlein also says, one puffs itself up for a few 
seconds while buried, opening wide the mouth and gill-covers and 
bristling the fins as if attacked by convulsive cramps. In many 
other fishes we frequently see the same kind o action which might 
by suggestively designated as yawning. 
They are quite hardy and tenacious of life, and may easily sur- 
vive being left during the recession of the tides on or in the sand. 
“Yn this situation of concealment,” according to Couch, one “ may 
chance to be left by the ebbing tide; but it is highly retentive of 
life, even when caught with a net or line, and therefore it suffers 
nothing by being left thus exposed.” It may, however, work its 
way farther “into the sand and become entirely concealed; Couch 
was informed of an instance where a dog, by pawing its way into 
the sand, showed its sense of some unwonted object that was con- 
cealed below, which, when discovered by digging, inflicted a blow 
on two persons who endeavored to grasp it, to their no little sur- 
prise and pain.” 
The weevers, or at least the greater weever, seem to be most active 
and prone to excursions in the night time; evidence to that effect 
was obtained by Jonathan Couch. He had known this fish taken in 
a floating net over thirty-five fathoms of water, and when several 
have been thus caught, it has always been in the early morning cast ° 
