48 



these are powerful but inactive creatures, voracious in feeding 

 on smaller fishes, and partially hybernating for a few months in 

 the year; altogether of high ancestry and low habits. The 

 Sturgeons are the chief representatives of this group. 



The elasmobranch fishes, such as Sharks, are also 

 heterocercal, and have ugly heads, but their bodies are lithe 

 and elegant, and their habits very active, though the Great 

 Basking Shark is an exception to this, being both ugly in form 

 and inactive in habits. 



Numerous individual fishes might be mentioned as showing 

 greater or less ugliness of form and inertness of habit ; among 

 these, are the following : — 



The British Angler Fish, or Sea Devil, Frog-fish, Fishing 

 Frog (lophius piscatorius) , is about as ugly a fish as can be 

 found. It spends its sluggish life at or near the bottom of the 

 sea, and at the mercy of wind or current. It is a short squat 

 creature, with a broad head and an enormously wide mouth, 

 which it opens wide to catch such small fry as it can attract by 

 its cunning fishing-tackle ; this consists of a waving crest 

 tentacle situated centrally on the forepart of the great head, 

 and the animal lies half-hidden by the seaweed, and well pro- 

 tected by its dull colouring, until the unwary prey are 

 engulphed in its great maw, to which the moving filament 

 serves to attract them. Grotesque, ugly and heavy in form, it 

 is sluggish to a degree in its habits, and dependent on a low 

 form of cunning for its livelihood. It probably illustrates the 

 combination of sluggishness of habit and ugliness of form as 

 closely as the gazelle shows activity and grace of form. 



The Angel Fish, a form intermediate between Sharks and 

 Rays, is another ill-favoured flattened fish of sluggish habits. 

 So also the John Dory is considered an exceedingly ugly and 

 ill-favoured fish, and is of sluggish habit and incapable of 

 much activity, frequently drifting about at the mercy of any 

 current of water. 



The Globe Fishes and Coffer Fishes are groups specially 

 modified, possessing bodies somewhat flattened when in their 

 ordinary condition, but capable of extraordinary distension of 

 of the oesophagus with air, which constitutes for them a method 

 of protection. They become distended at will and float on the 



