THE GAME FISHES OF THE WORLD 



and one of the rarest and most interesting animals elsewliere. It 

 builds a shell of diaphanous material by holding up its two sheU- 

 secreting arms, and in them secretes its soft shell, here depositing 

 its eggs. But the shell is not essential to it, being a mere cradle 

 for the eggs, and the argonaut wiU leave it and wander about, 

 and at times deserts it altogether. After a storm twenty of 

 these radiantly beautiful shells have been found on the island 

 beaches. 



As the boat moves out into deeper water, dragging the bait, 

 the pictures change, and we now see a wonderful mosaic. The 

 huge leaves of kelp are massed, and through them bits of vivid 

 turquoise-blue, the colour of the ocean, appear more than or- 

 dinarily vivid contrasted with the greens of the kelp, ranging from 

 dark to light green, yellow and olive. The sun sends visible beams 

 and shafts of light down through the azure windows, so that each 

 delicate jellyfish and many minute animals, as SappMrinae 

 and Salpae, stand out ia brilliant relief, forming with the loops 

 and portiferes a charming scene, only to be imagined in the deeps 

 •of the CaUfornian seas. Each leaf is a study, as it is ornamented, 

 silvered, with dainty corallines in fantastic shapes. Here are 

 crabs of red and green clinging to it, so deftly disguised by nature 

 that it is almost impossible to see them, having assumed this 

 colouring as a protection. Down through the Windows, and the 

 interstices of the kelp, is a deep, blue mass, so vivid as to be 

 startling. The boat stops, and we make it out to be a school of 

 perch, lying so closely together that they appear to be a sohd 

 mass of azure, their backs a vivid blue seen through the blue of 

 the ocean depths. The water is so clear here that one may see 

 the bottom in forty or more feet. 



As the boat drifts on we see the rocks and realize that we are 

 looking down the side of a precipitous mountain. Here altogether 

 new creatures are seen ; great crabs, huge sea-anemones, some 

 of smaller size and of a briUiant red hue, looking like straw- 

 berries. Wedged in the rocks is a small shark with a white spine 

 in front of each fin, one of the most ancient types, related to the 

 1:46 



