No. 400.] THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FISHES. 281 
other hand, it may be something of the nature of “feigning 
death," and thus be useful to the form in nature. . Possibly 
there may be some large form in the seas that preys upon 
young Snowy Groupers, and prefers to take them only in the 
excitement of actual chase, and ignores a dead or dying one. 
If this chance to be true, these peculiar **fits" of Epinephelus 
and. Pseudopriacanthus are in favor of the preservation of the 
species. Indeed, we are hardly yet upon the threshold of our 
knowledge of the habits and dehavior of fishes in nature, much 
less are we enabled to solve the problem in an untold number 
of cases, how in any special instance any special act in a fish's 
behavior first arose, and whether that act is wholly or only in 
part prompted by instinct. Whitman’s “Animal Behavior” 
and similar memoirs will in the future have a beneficial result 
in stimulating investigation and research in such directions. 
