HIGHER LIFE IN WATERS. 9J 



SHOOTING AND ANGLING FISHES. 



1. The Eton boy hastening home for the holidays pro- 

 rides himself with a tin tube and a pocketful of peas. We 

 beg the present Etonian's pardon ; we should have said he 

 used to do so formerly, when there were boys at Eton, 

 and, backed by some skill as a marksman, therewith con- 

 stituted himself an intolerable nuisance to every village 

 and vehicle he passed on his road home. The Macoushee 

 Indian makes a better use of his blow-tube ; he puffs small 

 arrows and hardened balls of clay through it with unerring 

 aim, doing great execution among birds and other small 

 game. 



2. Now, the chastodon, which is an inhabitant of the 

 Eastern seas from Ceylon to Japan, rather, perhaps, resem- 

 bles the Macoushee Indian than the Eton boy, though his 

 gun, shooting-tube, or blow-pipe, or whatever it may be 

 termed, is a natural one. His nose is really a kind of 

 "beak," through which he has the power of propelling a 

 small drop of water with some force and considerable ac- 

 curacy of aim. Near the edge of the water is perhaps a 

 spray of weed, a twig, or a tuft of grass ; on it sits a fly, 

 making its toilet in the watery mirror below. Rostratus 

 advances cautiously under the fly ; then he stealthily pro- 

 jects his tube from the water, takes a deadly aim, and pop 

 goes the watery bullet. 



"Poor insect, what a little day of sunny bliss is thine !" 

 Knocked over by the treacherous missile, drenched, stunued, 

 half drowned, she drops from her perch into the waters be- 

 low, to be sucked in by the chajtodon. 



3. But if we have fishes who can shoot their game, we 

 have also fishes who can fish for it ; ay, and fish for it witli 

 rod and line, and bait, as deftly as ever angler coaxed 

 gudgeons from the ooze of the New River or salmon from 



