272 PECTORAL FINS FEET-LIKE. 



approaching either to examine or to seize them, immediately 

 become the prey of the Fisher. 



Numerous are the writers who have borne their testimony 

 to this habit, and some have extolled it as raising the intel- 

 lectual character of this fish beyond that of most of its class. 

 Half the animal world seem destined to destroy each other, 

 some by open violence, others by stratagem ; and this design 

 in the Angler, though singular, is not more wonderful than 

 that of spiders among insects, who spin and repair their 

 widely-spread webs to catch other insects upon which they 

 subsist. 



The Angler has been known to measure five feet in 

 length, but the most common size is about three feet. Mr. 

 Couch says, " It makes but little diiFerence what the prey 

 is, either in respect of size or quality. A fisherman had 

 hooked a Cod-fish, and while drawing it up he felt a heavier 

 weight attach itself to his line : this proved to be an Angler 

 of large size, which he compelled to quit its hold by a heavy 

 blow on its head, leaving its prey still attached to the hook. 

 In another instance, an Angler seized a Conger Eel that had 

 taken the hook ; but after the latter had been engulphed 

 in the enormous jaws — and perhaps stomach, it struggled 

 through the gill-aperture of the Angler, and in that situa- 

 tion both were drawn up together. I have been told of its 

 swallowing the large ball of cork employed as a buoy to a 

 bulter, or deep-sea line ; and the fact this implies of its mount- 

 ing to the surface is further confirmed by the evidence of 

 sailors and fishermen, who have seen it floating, and taken 

 it with a line at mid-water. These fishes sometimes abound, 

 and a fisherman who informed me of the circumstance found 

 seven of them at one time on the deck of a trawl-boat : on 

 expressing his surprise at the number, he was told that it 

 was not uncommon to take a dozen at once." — CoucWs MS. 



