G3 
and Hunts Bay. their favourite feeding ground, | 
passed three of these monsters swimming on the 
surface. ‘They were spread out, in the midst of the 
dotted mangroves like lotus leaves upon apond. It 
is about the sands here, you will find the nurse-shark 
scyliium ciliate basking by hundreds in the month 
of July : and at all times the gar-fish in the glance 
of the rising sun, amusing itself by leaping from left 
to right and right te left over every stick that floats 
in its way. livery now and then one or other kind 
of fish will make a clean breaching of some dozen or 
fifteen feet up into the air. Here we may meet with 
our cetaceous dolphins rolling and tumbling. Fishes 
are very frolicsome. I confess that when Isee their 
sportiveness, the evidence of their exuberant enjoy- 
ment of life; their swimming hither and thither, 
sometimes few and sometimes many together ; swift 
or slow, gentle or rapid, just as they please, the ele- 
ment seems to be to have in it that especial plea- 
sureableness which is exhibited by a parcel of boys 
ina morning bathe. Water has a comfort of feeling 
exceedingly appreciable to our own sensibilities, and, 
-{ think, above ail, sea-water. . 
The lips of the sea-devil are a pavement of ivory 
rough and rugged asa file, Their fins spread cut 
into a point, like the wings of a bird. They have 
flexible cartilaginous horns to their head, making a 
kind of inward roll upon one another. With these 
they scoop their food into their capacious mouths. 
One cannot contemplate this platitude of fish with- 
out wishing to see in such a giant the removed skin, 
with the numerous phalanges divided into several. 
t 

