6 SALT-WATER FISHES 



possibly even indicating the structure of the parent stock of 

 all fishes, if not indeed of all vertebrates. 



While these pages are to concern themselves with the 

 habits and life-history of our sea fish rather than with any 

 detailed examination of their anatomical structure and affinities, 

 it is obviously desirable, if the reader is to follow the accounts 

 here given without inconvenience, to set down quite briefly in 

 this first chapter some outline of the appearance and physical 

 peculiarities of these fishes, of their food, their migrations, 

 and their manner of reproducing their kind. The Latin, or 

 rather scientific, name is given in brackets, even at the risk of 

 apparently superfluous repetition, when any fish is cited in 

 illustration of a principle, as confusion is otherwise likely to 

 ensue. Any English reader, for instance, consulting Dr. 

 Bashford Dean's fascinating volume on Fishes, Living and 

 Fossil, might easily be misled on reading of the sea-bream 

 (p. 225), were it not plainly indicated that Ctenolabrus, a 

 wrasse, is intended. 



A glance at the illustrations in the present volume, at the 

 specimens in the Natural History Museum, or at the fish- 

 monger's slab, should suffice to indicate the great 

 Colour, variety of shape in our fishes. The extremes of 

 size, it is true, can be seen only at the Museum, 

 since the largest and smallest forms are alike unsuited to the 

 requirements of commerce, and it is impossible even approxi- 

 mately to indicate these in a book. The two great divisions, 

 so far as shape goes, are the round and the fiat, the mackerel 

 (Scomber) being the type of the former, and the plaice 

 {Pleuronectes) standing for the second. A little more 

 famiharity with the characters of these two groups will show 

 us that there is no such combination as a silvery flat-fish. 

 The dory {Zeus) is, in a sense, flat, and it is also in a measure 

 silvery ; but the flatness of the dory is not that of the plaice, 

 and it swims on its belly, like other round fishes, whereas the 

 plaice swims on its left side. Most of the fishes which lie at 



