OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 25 



from the attacks of other animals, or, as illustrated in the 

 present instance, for the purpose of enabling it by stealth 

 to obtain prey, which it lacks the agility to hunt down 

 after the manner of ordinary carnivorous fishes. To 

 recognise 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 colours are more or less completely 

 obliterated, and the various membraneous appendages shrunk 

 up and distorted. In place of this, a healthy living example 

 fresh from the sea, or better still, acclimatised in the tanks 

 of an aquarium, must be attentively examined, and where- 

 upon it will be found that this singular fish throughout 

 the whole extent of its superficies may be appropriately 

 designated a living sham. Such an example of the Angler, 

 measuring no less than four feet long, imported by the writer 

 to the tanks of the Manchester Aquarium in November 1874, 

 furnished the material for an article communicated by him 

 to the ' Field,' * in which the greater portion of the data here 

 submitted were first described. It was in the first place 

 observed on that occasion that the fish, while quietly reclining 

 upon the bottom of its tank, presented a most astonishing 

 resemblance to a piece of inert rock, the rugose prominences 

 in the neighbourhood of the head lending additional strength 

 to this likeness. This resemblance being recognised, it was 

 next found, on a little closer inspection, that the fish consti- 

 tuted in connection with its colour, ornamentations, and 

 manifold organs and appendages, the most perfect facsimile 

 of a submerged rock, with that natural clothing of sedentary 

 animal and vegetable growths, common to boulders lying 



* W. Saville Kent, " On an Angler at the Manchester Aquarium," 

 'Field,' November 14, 1874: ib. Westminster Aquarium, 'Field,' 

 November 7, 1876. 



