ANGLER. 
207 
and who are without a suspicion of the danger proceeding from 
the gaping but quiescent cavern of a mouth. And formidable 
indeed is that gulph which lies open to receive the prey, as 
hungry is the stomach which is prepared to receive it. “This 
fish is all one vast extended mouth,” says Oppian; to which 
we may add by adaptation, from our English poet Spenser — 
“The open mouth, that seemed to contain 
A full good peck within the utmost brim. 
All set with dreadful teeth in ranges twain, 
That terrified his foes, and armed him. 
Appearing like the mouth of Orous ghastly grim.” 
The extent of the mouth is indeed formidable, for in an 
example which measured four feet and a half in length, and 
weighed seventy-two pounds, this organ measured fourteen 
inches across; and this in action is capable of being greatly 
extended by means of several joints with which these parts 
are supplied, to a larger degree than in most other fishes. In 
opening the mouth the lower jaw is rather protruded than 
lowered. The upper jaw is also capable of some degree of 
protrusion, and at its symphysis a sidelong motion is also put 
in action, by which it appears possible that the Angler might 
be able to swallow a prey equal, or nearly so, to its own 
bulk, to which also a wide gullet can afford a passage and 
the stomach a welcome; while the skin of the body is so 
loose as to allow of any degree of distension without incon- 
venience, and there are no ribs on the sides that might offer 
a mechanical resistance. Nor can the food pass easily out of 
the stomach into the intestines without being entirely digested, 
for its lower or pyloric orifice is small, and there is reason 
for supposing that the process of digestion is itself slow. On 
one occasion there were nearly three quarters of a hundied 
of herrings found in the stomach of an Angler, and so little 
change had they suffered that they were sold by the fishermen 
in the market, without any suspicion in the buyei of the 
manner in which they had been obtained. In another instance 
there were taken from the stomach twenty-one Flounders and 
a Dorey, all of them of sufficient size and sufficiently uninjured 
to make a good appearance in the market where they were 
sold. 
