Order Pediculati: The Anglers 543 
The skin is smooth, with dermal flaps about the head. Over the 
mouth, like a fishing-rod, hangs the first dorsal spine with a lure 
at the tip. The fishes lie flat on the bottom with sluggish move- 
ments except for the convulsive snap of the jaws. It has been 
denied that the bait serves to attract small fishes to their destruc- 
tion, but the current belief that it does so is certainly plausible. 
As to this Dr. Gill observes: 
“The name ‘angler’ is derived from the supposition that by 
means of the foremost dorsal spine, which bears leaf-like tags, 
or appendages, at the end, it angles for fishes itself, lying upon 
the ground with its head somewhat upraised. According to 
Mr. S. Kent, however, this is at most only partly the case: ‘That 
the fish deliberately uses this structure as a fisherman does his 
rod and line for the alluring and capture of other fish is a matter 
of tradition handed. down to us from the time of Pliny and 
Aristotle, and which scarcely any authority since their time 
has ventured to gainsay. Nevertheless, like many of the de- 
lightful natural-history romances bequeathed to us by the 
ancient philosophers, this one of the angler-fish will have to be 
relegated to the limbo of disproved fiction. The plain and 
certain ground of facts, all the same, has frequently more start- 
ling revelations in store for us than the most fervid imagina- 
tions of philosophers, and that this assertion holds good in the 
case now under consideration must undoubtedly be admitted. 
It is here proposed to show, in fact, that the angler is one of the 
most interesting examples upon which Nature has exercised her 
handicraft, in the direction of concealing the identity of her 
protégé, such ingenuity being sometimes utilized with the object 
of protecting the organism from the attacks of other animals, or, 
as illustrated in the present instance, for the purpose of en- 
abling it by stealth to obtain prey which it lacks the agility to 
hunt down after the manner of ordinary carnivorous fishes. 
To recognize the several details here described, it will not suffice 
to refer to examples simply, and usually most atrociously 
stuffed, nor even to those preserved in spirit, in which all the 
life colors are more or less completely obliterated and the vari- 
ous membranous appendages shrunk up and distorted. In 
place of this, a healthy, living example fresh from the sea, or, 
better still, acclimatized in the tanks of an aquarium, must be 
