194 Fish Stories 



in looks, as the name chimsera would indicate, for a 

 chimsera was a kind of goat-headed spook with which the 

 Greeks used to frighten their children. They are soft of 

 body and smooth of skin, with gristle for bone. The flesh 

 is coarse and ill-flavored, and no fisherman seeks them, 

 unless it be for the oil that fills their voluminous livers. 



There is a big spine in the dorsal fin. The teeth are sim- 

 ply flat pieces of bone, the fins are large, the tail long and 

 slim, for which reason some fishermen call them ratfishes, 

 and the rat-like gnawing teeth bear out the same idea. The 

 male has a curious hook on his head, ending in a little pad 

 of enameled teeth, and no one can guess what useful pur- 

 pose it serves. We only know that chimseras have always 

 had them. 



There are chimseras in every cold sea, but they are no- 

 where so common as in California. This is because our 

 chimsera in the cold Japan current lives in shallower water 

 than any other, and hence is more easily caught. Our 

 species, Chimera colliei, is found in the bays everywhere, 

 from Sitka on the north down to Santa Catalina Island, 

 where specimens are often seen in the aquarium. When- 

 ever a rock is blown out by dynamite in any harbor, dozens 

 of chimseras are killed and brought to the surface, to be sent 

 as curiosities to the university museums. It is especially 

 common in Puget Sound and in Monterey Bay, where it 

 was first found sixty years ago, by Mr. Collie, the natu- 

 ralist on board of Captain Beechey's ship, the " Blossom." 



Our chimsera is iron-gray in color, with large white spots. 

 It lays very large eggs, in long white leathery cases, and in 

 these cases, safe from the meddling of inquisitive crabs and 

 sculpins, the young chimsera is hatched. As he grows up, 

 strange, solitary and fantastic, he deserves our respect, for 

 like ourselves, he has a very long lineage, and there has 

 never been a time within the last ten million years when the 

 chimsera family was not among the first families of the sea, 

 just as ours ranks with the first of the land. 



