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These spines on fishes may be merely defensive, or they may be capable of active employment in inflicting serious wounds. The combination occurs in our weevers, which have a protruding black dorsal fin, doubtless of terrifying aspect as its owner lies motionless in the sand, and equally sharp spines behind the gill-covers, the latter furnished with grooved channels, along which is apparently conveyed a venomous secretion. The mechanism of the weever's spines has been erroneously likened to that of the adder's fang, but the poison bag and duct are wanting in the fish, nor, indeed, is its volition in the act of wounding quite satisfactorily established beyond all question. It is said to throw itself sideways and backwards, even when out of water, with such accuracy as instantly to stab the incautious finger that touches it. I do not cite against this the fact that of the many scores of living weevers that I have tested in this way with my boot not one displayed any such accuracy of marksmanship. Yet surely, if such a power is vouchsafed, it is for use in the water only under natural conditions. No one is going to make me believe either that Nature original

ly designed the weever to aim its stab out of water, or that inherited experience of handling by man has been sufficiently cumulative for the fish to acquire any such instinct in self-defence. The actual venom-sac, like that of snakes, though absent in the weever, occurs in a deadly little fish found in Sydney Harbor, and there known as the "fortescue." It is difficult to conceive of either the fortescue or weever as having many natural enemies, but the latter, at any rate, sufficiently resembles the dragonet and bullhead, both of them favorite articles of food with some larger fishes, to benefit considerably by its defensive weapons.

After all, however, the simplest form of self-defence is retreat. Protective armor is very well as far as it goes. Bluff, as the Americans call the art of imposing on the enemy's credulity, is at times even better. But best of all for the weaker-and defence, after all, belongs to the weaker-is a judicious and timely retreat-the sooner the better:

He who fights and runs away
Lives to fight another day;

but he who runs away first, without stopping to strike a blow, has a still better chance for the future. Such is the method adopted with some success by the launce and sand-eel, the rabbits of the sea, which burrow in the sand with great expedition on the approach of danger. Even when the fisherman is hungry for the best bait that swims, it takes a strong fork and a quick hand to dislodge these little cavedwellers from their lair. I doubt whether any of the larger fishes which prey on the sand-eels when they catch them would be able to dig fast enough, the rays alone, which hunt, as a matter of fact, after larger fish, having shovelshaped snouts sufficiently pointed for the purpose. The flatfish also find safety in the sand, though they rarely

submerge their head, trusting to their protective coloring, about which something has yet to be said, to dupe their watchful enemies.

There is the flight that seeks safety in distance from the pursuer, and there is the instinct that prompts the small boy, when threatened by a bully, to run for protection to a bigger fellow. This habit, which I do not remember to have noticed in either birds or reptiles, is seen in the pilot-fish, which cowers beside the shark, and in the little Fierasfer, which swims secure under the protecting bell of a medusa, not by any means as a noxious parasite, but rather as a grateful messmate, feeding on the small organisms suspended in the water. The mere outdistancing of a pursuer is constantly enacted in the world of waters under our eye, and I have watched hundreds of sand-eels escape in this way from the jaws of hake and bass. As seen, at any rate, in the aquarium, the larger fishes do not seem to persist in pursuit. Their plan is rather a sudden dash, and if that is fruitless they await another chance without going in pursuit.

Throwing dust in the enemy's eyes, as practised by the retreating cuttlefish with its cloud of "ink," which must in the still water have the same effect as a sudden fog in the London streets, has no parallel among fishes, though some of the flatfish feebly imitate the ruse by flinging up a little sand, under cover of which they manage to alight once more out of sight. A similar plan is also adopted by shrimps, which I have noticed behave in this manner when dislodged, resembling in their action grasshoppers suddenly disturbed on a dusty road.

Where it is a question of retreat and pursuit, the battle is to the swift. Some fishes, however, are not built for flight, and such as these must remain where they are, and trust either to not

being seen at all, or, if seen, to frightening their enemies by a simulation of a strength that is not theirs. These different manoeuvres involve two separate lines of action. The first is dependent on the aid of protective coloring.

In the aquariums of Plymouth, Brighton, and Naples I have seen turbot lying on sand, shingle, or concrete, and in each case the fish harmonized so well with its background that but for the movement of its respiration the human eye could not, I think, have distinguished it in a dozen feet of

water.

To take full advantage of protective coloring an animal must remain perfectly motionless. Whether any animal, other than man, and particularly a fish, can hold its breath in moments of great danger, or whether, being able, it ever occurs to it to do so, I do not know; but certainly the breathing of these turbot alone betrayed them to the eye.

What measure of voluntary adaptation to the different backgrounds aforementioned there may have been in these turbot could not be easily deter mined, but I have certainly seen young examples of these species, taken by the late Matthias Dunn in a hand-net in the clear water off Pentewan, change within half an hour from their original whiteness to the blackness of the iron bucket to which they were presently transferred. Seahorses, too, particularly some of the Australian species, adapt their appearance wonderfully to the outline of the weed-fronds amid which they hide. Some of the skates and rays show similar protective coloring to that of the flatfish when lying on the bottom of their aquarium tanks, and them, too, the movement of the breathing-spiracles alone betrays.

The flat shape of the turbot and sole aids them in escaping notice when lying on the sand, and it is said that the distribution of the color, on the upper

surface only, still further contributes to this appearance of flatness.

The hiding of the dory, which is a vertical-swimming fish, depends on another optical illusion. So thin is the dory from side to side, so close do the fins lie to its sides, that, viewed end on, the fish vanishes to a thin line. I have repeatedly watched dory creep right on unsuspecting sand-eels beneath Bournemouth Pier in this fashion, and there can be little doubt that the hiding which serves to ambuscade a weaker but swifter victim will also on occasion serve to escape from a stronger enemy. Color protection is also observed in the cod, conger, and some other of our sea-fish which are captured on either rocky or sandy ground, those examples caught on the rocks being conspicuously darker than those whose abode is on the sand. The conger are, in fact, distinguished by the fishermen as "black" and "white" conger. Those who have bathed in Australian bays will recall a similar and very necessary distinction between "black" and "white" water, the latter being that with a background of sand which betrays the presence of dreaded sharks. Even the blue-and-silver herring blends so wonderfully with the ruffled surface-water that on a breezy, sunny day the individual fish can be distinguished only with the greatest difficulty.

Some among our fishes, however, are too conspicuous to hide with any hope of success. The screens of weed and walls of rock do not offer those aids to concealment which man finds in his artificially constructed dwellings, and hiding in the sea is a very different art from hiding in cities. Two conditions prejudice the success of hiding in such conditions: size and conspicuous shape or coloring, the last only, perhaps, in the shallow water, where the light penetrates to the bottom. Perhaps the largest and ugliest

stand the best chance in such a competition. The sharks and rays are less preyed upon than preying, so that their mighty size and exceeding ugliness are not, perhaps, of much service to themselves, rather helping their victims to see them in time and effect an escape. As regards other groups, our standards of beauty are not necessarily those of the fish critics, but it may perhaps be assumed that, even to the eye of a fish epicure, there can be nothing very appetizing in the appearance of such eerie creatures as the anglerfish, chimæra, lumpsucker, scabbard-fish, wolf-fish, red bandfish, or sunfish, to mention only a few of the uglier members of the British submarine commonwealth.

The darkness of night is, of course, in the sea as well as on land, some sort of protection for the feeble, but in both situations night-hawks are apt to profit by an illusion of security and to fall upon their victims under cover of a gloom that betrayed where it should have shielded. Conger, hake and other marauders are also on the prowl during the night hours, and against such of these as hunt by scent-and my own opinion is that fishes are wonderfully adaptive in this, being guided by eye or nose as circumstances dictate-the smaller kinds have a poor chance. There is another feeding-time, however, which is in many ways safer for the weak, and that is on the falling tide. Those who angle in tidal waters know well that it is on the flood that, with few exceptions, they get their best fish, but I have noticed that the smaller individuals, the pout and pollack and whiting, often bite best on the ebb. Thus they take their turn when their elders are resting, with the advantage over night-feeding that they can see their enemy before he is upon them.

So far, then, we have seen that fishes defend themselves by almost every method known to beasts and birds.

With that form of defence which consists in giving blow for blow, otherwise fighting it out until the stronger wins, I have not concerned myself, though we constantly come upon evidences of severe battle, and Orientals even amuse themselves with the fights of captive fishes kept, like gamecocks, for the purpose.

There is, however, one more trick of self-defence, familiar to naturalists in higher animal groups, though always a subject of dispute among animal psychologists, and that is the ruse of feigning death, and thus deceiving the stronger enemy into leaving the field clear. Even brute beasts, unless they be carrion-eating hyænas, do not as a rule molest a dead body. This manner of deception has been called "foxing," yet some of those who know the fox best declare that it never practices such methods. The animal which undoubtedly "foxes," according to the testimony of many independent observers, is the opossum of America. exact mental operation which induces this behavior I am not here concerned. Some regard it as a mere cataleptic collapse under strong fear, while others accept it as a genuine deception. With some reservations, I must rank myself with the latter; and it is, therefore, particularly interesting to me to have found, as I think, a genuine instance of "foxing" in a fish. I give the following case only for what it may be worth as evidence, but, as I do not remember to have seen any such instance previously recorded, it may be

The Cornhill Magazine.

With the

of interest. When fishing for bass in estuaries we use living sand-eels, and these are kept in a floating wooden box tethered to the boat and hauled from the water whenever a fresh bait is required. On three consecutive occasions one morning last summer the bait, which I picked from the rest, lay apparently lifeless, its gill-covers hardly moving on the palm of my hand, and, as a half-dead bait is useless for the work, I pitched the moribund sand-eel overboard. The first had no sooner touched the water than it darted off as in perfect health. The second behaved likewise. This roused my suspicions, and I purposely sacrified the third. If the bait had not been getting scarce, or rather, perhaps, if my angling zeal had not for the moment dominated my devotion to scientific knowledge, I should have tried the fish until all were overboard. Even those three cases, however, are not, I think, quite without interest, and it would be useful to learn whether similar cases have come under the observation of any who are in the habit of live-baiting for pike with dace or gudgeon. The lowest expression of "foxing" is when one village lad lies in the road with his arm shielding his head, and another stands over him and at intervals administers a stimulating kick. Such cowardice one hardly expects to find in fishes, but a fragile sand-eel is surely excused if it declines combat with an ogre in whose palm half a dozen of its kind could lie at full length.

F. G. Aflalo.

The Honorable John Oswald had quite enough money of his own without there being any need for him to spend his time driving cranky marine

engines for such wages as accrue from that somewhat precarious pursuit. His many friends did not understand it; neither did they approve. For months