640 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. | [Vor. XXXIX. 
them asleep. There was no outward difference between the 
sleeping ones and the others; all were curled quietly on the 
bottom, but if by chance a sleeping one was touched, instead of 
wriggling away it remained passive, unless perchance it coiled 
tighter, retaining its coil even when lifted from the water. 
Once I found two sound asleep, surrounded by a mass of slime 
in which they had in some way become lodged. The slime 
served them as a buoy, and they were floating quietly in it on 
the surface of the tank, circling around with the current. I 
took them out and stripped their covering from them, but they 
hardly aroused while I did so, and settled down to sleep again 
as soon as they were put back into the tank. Sometimes after 
a minute or two of handling they awake, but an interval elapses 
between their first stirring when they squirm uneasily in the 
hand, and full alertness when they swim rapidly away, or if 
held tight, they make the usual vigorous efforts to free them- 
selves. If before the fish is wide awake, it is put back gently, 
it can drop off to sleep again. I once lifted a sleeping fish, 
dropped it into a pail, carried it a distance of more than two 
hundred feet, took it out of the pail, and started to decapitate 
it. All this motion followed by the tight grasp of my hand and 
the first touch of the shears, usually the first signal for the 
most frantic struggles, did not rouse it perceptibly, and its head 
was off before it began to squirm. 
It is interesting to watch their movements, while they are 
becoming accustomed to confinement. When the first lot of 
fifty were placed in the tank it contained only water. They 
were normal fish in every respect and when first placed in their 
new home they swam around very vigorously, threw out a great 
deal of slime when touched, and were on the whole, unusually 
excited. After a short while, they settled down on the bottom, 
in the usual coils (Fig. 2), an occasional group of three or four 
together, the rest separate. Two days later sand was put on 
the bottom, and the rock pile built at one side. 
In a few hours 
all had burrowed among the rocks. 
] There they lived very 
quietly, seldom moving when left to themselves, except at night. 
F or the first four or five days they were easily aroused by 
dipping a small pailful of water from the tank and pouring it on 
