218 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



Of the entire range of fish-life of the river or its trib- 

 utaries there is no one species more attractive than this. 

 Its manner is as peculiarly its own as its anatomical 

 features are unique, and he who doubts that fishes play, 

 just as children do, should watch a number of these 

 fishes. In the first place, they never go about singly. 

 Always there are a dozen or more, and often as many 

 as a hundred are seen. When they come into the creek 

 and get among the eel-grass the fun commences. They 

 glide in and out of the waving ribbons of the slender 

 water-weed with all the gracefulness of the undulations 

 of the plant. Very frequently they chase each other 

 or play a game of hide-and-seek, and however fast and 

 furious the fun, their gracefulness of movement is never 

 lost. They seldom are at rest. Perhaps, as is said of 

 carp, they never sleep. Whether swimming onward, as 

 though only anxious to reach a distant point, or play- 

 fully wandering about some attractive spot, the body al- 

 ways has that sigmoid curve which is so attractive, and 

 tends even to lessen the ugliness of the most repulsive 

 forms of animal life. All know how very different is 

 a gracefully coiled serpent from one that is stretched 

 out in a nearly straight line. 



The billfishes have one habit, quite frequently in- 

 dulged in, which I am not aware is common to any 

 other species occurring in our waters — that of turning 

 over upon their backs while rapidly swimming, and in 

 this position continuing their course for some distance. 

 Had I not often witnessed this, during the past three 

 years, I should have considered it an error in observa- 

 tion on the part of the reporter. To-day, the many 



