THE SMALL GAME FISHES OF FLOEIDA 



While speckled snake and spotted pard their markings still display, 

 Though he who once embalm'd them both himself be turned to clay. 

 On fish a different fate attends, nor reach they long the shore 

 Ere fade their hues Uke rainbow tints, and soon their beauty's o'er. 

 The eye that late in ocean's flood was large and round and full. 

 Becomes on land a sunken orb, glaucomatous and dull ; 

 The giUs, like mushrooms, soon begin to turn from pink to black. 

 The blood congeals in stasis thick, the scales upturn and crack ; 

 And those fair forms, a Veronese, in art's meridian power. 

 With every varied tint at hand, and in his happiest hour, 

 Could ne'er in equal beauty deck and bid the canvas live. 

 Are now so colourless and cold, a Rembrandt's touch might give.' 



All the classical writers refer to them. IsTuma called them 

 ' brains of Jove,' and Aristotle dwelt upon their beauties and 

 believed they are the only fishes that sleep at night, as note his lines : 



' Scarus alone their folded eyehds close 

 In grateful intervals of soft repose ; 

 In some sequestered ceU, removed from sight. 

 They doze away the dangers of the night.' 



It is not the beauty of the fish, but its qualities as a hard 

 fighter that I would refer to, and doubtless few anglers have 

 played them, as their mouths are smaU, their teeth, after the 

 fashion of the bird parrot, more hte biUs, only of seeming ivory 

 or china, and the ordinary smaU hook, that naturally would be 

 selected for them, is easily nipped off, as a macaw will bite a wire. 

 The hook must be very small but very stout, a number six Unen 

 line and a rod of six ounces, six or seven feet long, or better, an 

 eight-ounce rod, ten feet long, stiff enough to Hft a sulking fish. 



With this equipment, and crayfish bait, we may approach the 

 parrot fish, which is scorned by the marketman, who takes it 

 because he cannot help it, in pots or traps set for something else. 

 It is seen at times with the band previously described, but, 

 like the angel-fish, is slow and dignified, and does not rush at the 

 bait with the yeUowtails and grunts, but lurks in the shadow of 

 some resplendent yellow sea-fan, where it will bend its body, as 

 does the kelp-fish of California, then suddenly moves away 

 rapidly, using its pectoral fins and not its tail. 



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