214 SALT-WATER FISHES 



lived under such treatment for more than three years. The 

 same observer records an abnormal piebald plaice with much 

 less than the usual development of colour on the upper side. 

 Mr. Cunningham is, in fact, one of the greatest living 

 authorities on the present group, and his widely read mono- 

 graph on the common sole, pubHshed some years ago under 

 the auspices of the Marine Biological Association, is perhaps 

 the most exhaustive treatise ever written on a single economic 

 fish. Only one other account of a single flat-fish, at any rate 

 in the English language, is worthy of comparison, that of the 

 plaice, by Mr. F. J. Cole and J. Johnstone, of Liverpool, which 

 appeared in far less elaborate form in the 1901 Report on the 

 Lancashire Sea Fisheries Laboratory . 



Wonderful as are the flat-fishes, however, as absorbing 

 in their life-history to the naturalist as are their capture and 

 sale to the merchant, many legends have been weaved around 

 them that have only the slightest element of truth. By a 

 singular lack of fairness, those who take a pleasure in manu- 

 facturing natural history always choose for their subjects not 

 the least interesting animals, to which some such adventitious 

 interest might be a gain, but those which are already so 

 remarkable that any improvement on their peculiarities is 

 superfluous. The amazing changes undergone by larval 

 flat-fishes, already described in the sixties by Professor 

 Traquair, were not enough, but men must add fictions of 

 their own. According to some, they were descended from 

 shrimps; according to others, shrimps were a mere stage in 

 their development. Others confused their spawn with that 

 of sea-worms ; and a not uncommon disease of the flounder, 

 which causes a local granulation of the skin, was construed 

 into a story that the flounder, like the Surinam toad, hatched 

 its eggs out in pits in its own back. 



These flat-fishes may be divided, following Cunningham 

 and other accepted authorities, in four groups, in the first 

 three of which the eyes and colour are on the right side. 



