The Animal World, A Book of Natural History Part 46

RAYS

The rays have broad flattened bodies, and very long and slender tails.

In consequence of this structure they cannot swim by means of their tails, as nearly all other fishes do, but travel slowly through the water by waving their side fins, after the manner of soles and flounders.

One of the best known of these fishes is the skate, which when fully grown sometimes measures as much as six feet in length from the snout to the tip of the tail, and five feet in width of body. As it cannot swim fast enough to overtake other fishes, it preys chiefly upon crabs, lobsters, and sh.e.l.l-bearing mollusks, which it finds on the bottom and is able easily to crunch up, sh.e.l.ls and all.

The eggs of this fish may be found in great numbers on the sea-sh.o.r.e.

They are very much like those of the dogfish, but are nearly black in color, and instead of a long twisted tendril at each corner, they only have a blunt projection about an inch long. They remind one, in fact, of a hand-barrow, and consequently the fishermen often call them "skate-barrows."

In color, the skate is grayish brown above and grayish white beneath.

Another very curious ray is the torpedo, which is an electric fish, having a kind of electric battery inside its body, from which a very powerful shock can be discharged at will. This battery, in appearance, is something like a honeycomb, consisting of a number of six-sided columns, which run from the skin of the back to that of the lower surface of the body. Each of these columns is divided into a number of cells, or chambers, by thin walls of membrane; and each cell contains a liquid which seems to consist chiefly of salt and water.

The electricity produced and stored up in these organs seems to be discharged along four great nerves, which run from the battery up to the brain. The shock is sufficiently strong to kill a duck; and not only has an electric bell been rung by it, but an electric spark has been actually obtained. And when five persons held one another's hands, and the person at each end laid his finger upon the torpedo, every one of the five persons felt the shock.

Even more formidable, though in quite a different way, is the sting-ray.

At the base of its long whip-like tail this fish has a bony spine set with sharp teeth, like a saw; and its favorite mode of attack is to coil this tail round the body of its victim and then to drive the spine into his flesh, working it backward and forward in such a manner as to cause a very serious wound always followed by severe inflammation.

Some of the rays in the warmer seas grow to a very great size; indeed, a ray measuring over eighteen feet in length has more than once been captured. They are dangerous creatures to meddle with, for a fish of this size is quite strong enough to overturn a boat, while if a man were once seized by one of them, he would have very little chance of escape.

These huge creatures are generally known as devil-fish.

THE STURGEON

This fish belongs to quite a different group, which may be distinguished by two points. In the first place, its skeleton is made not of bone, but of gristle; and in the second place, five rows of s.h.i.+eld-like bony plates run along the back and sides of the body, forming a kind of natural armor.

The sturgeon is often eight or nine feet long, and weighs three or four hundred pounds. It spends most of its life in the sea, but ascends the rivers in order to sp.a.w.n, like the salmon. It is not so common as formerly in American waters, although sturgeon are taken in nearly all our larger rivers from time to time; but in some parts of Europe, and especially in Russia, it is very plentiful.

Caviare is made from the sturgeon's roe. The membranes which separate the eggs from one another are all removed, and the eggs are then salted and pressed into small barrels, being afterward eaten as a kind of preserve.

The best isingla.s.s is made from the sturgeon's swimming-bladder, which has so much gelatine in it that, if a small quant.i.ty is dissolved in a hundred times as much boiling water, it will form a stiff jelly when it is cold.

The sturgeon's flesh is very good to eat, for it is not only well-flavored, but is so firm and solid that it is almost like beef.

In England the sturgeon is known as a "royal" fish, because, in days of old, when one of these fish was caught in an English river, it was always kept for the table of the king; and even now, if a sturgeon is captured in that part of the Thames which is under the control of the Lord Mayor of London, it belongs by right to the Crown.

THE BEAKED CHaeTODON

A great many fishes are very odd to look at, and this is one of the oddest. Imagine a fish with an almost circular flattened body, with five brown bands edged with white running round it, huge round eyes, enormous triangular fins both above and below the body, a broad tail, which looks as if it were tied in by a piece of ribbon at the base, and a mouth drawn out into a long slender beak! And this fish has a habit which is even odder still, for when it sees an insect sitting on a leaf which overhangs the margin of the sea, it takes careful aim, squirts a drop of water at it from out of its long beak, and nearly always succeeds in knocking it into the water below!

This fish lives in the Indian and Polynesian seas, and is sometimes kept as a pet by the j.a.panese, who amuse themselves by fastening a fly to the end of a piece of stick and holding it over the bowl in which the fish is living, in order to see it knocked off its perch by a pellet of water.

THE COD

Throughout the northern seas the cod is found, and in some parts it is taken in immense numbers. The largest and finest of all, which sometimes weigh more than one hundred pounds, come from the banks, or shallows in the sea, off the sh.o.r.es of Newfoundland, but very fine ones have been taken elsewhere; and extensive cod-fisheries are maintained in the North Pacific, near Alaska.

Cod are mostly captured by means of long lines, each about forty fathoms in length, to which a number of smaller lines are fastened at intervals.

The hooks are placed on the side lines, and are generally baited with whelks, and then the long lines, or trawls, as the fishermen call them, are anch.o.r.ed in shallow parts of the sea where codfishes, halibut, and the like abound. Each boat carries about eight miles of these lines, with nearly five thousand hooks, so that the work of baiting, lowering, and raising them is very heavy indeed. The fis.h.i.+ng takes place in the winter, and the boats are generally out in all weathers for several months at a time.

One would think that with so many boats engaged in cod-fis.h.i.+ng, each with so many miles of line, nearly all the cod in the sea would soon be caught. But to offset this, a single cod in a single year will often lay eight or nine million eggs, so that notwithstanding the immense number of these fishes which are taken, they still seem as plentiful as ever.

FLATFISH

The so-called flatfishes, such as the sole, the plaice, the flounder, and the dab, form an interesting group. Although we call them "flat," we ought really to call them "thin," because what we always consider as the back of a sole is really one of its sides, and what seems to be the lower surface is the other side.

The explanation is this: when these fishes are quite small, they swim upright in the water, just as other fishes do, and drive themselves along by means of their tails. But when they are about a month old a strong desire comes over them to go and lie down on the mud at the bottom of the sea, and then three remarkable things happen.

First their color changes. Up till now, both sides of their bodies have been nearly white. But if a white fish were to lie down on dark-brown mud, of course it would very easily be seen, and most likely would very soon be devoured by one of its many enemies. So as soon as the little fish lies down at the bottom of the water its upper surface begins to grow darker, and before very long it exactly resembles the hue of the surrounding mud. Or if the fish should lie upon sand, as the plaice does, then its upper surface becomes colored like the sand. So as long as it keeps still its enemies may pa.s.s quite close to it without noticing it.

The next thing that happens is that the little fish changes its way of swimming. Hitherto it has driven itself through the water by means of its tail; now it uses what were formerly its upper and lower fins, but have now been turned into side fins. And by a very graceful waving movement of these fins it winds its way, as it were, through the water.

But the third change is the strangest of the three. One of the eyes would now seem to be useless, since it is on the lower surface of the head as the fish lies on the sea-bottom, and would be completely buried in the mud. But as soon as the fish goes and lies down at the bottom of the sea, this eye actually begins to travel along the lower surface of the head, till at last it works its way round and settles down by the side of the other!

If you look at the flounders the next time you pa.s.s by a fish-market, you will observe that both eyes are placed quite close together above the same corner of the mouth. That is because the lower eye traveled round the head till it found a resting-place by the side of the other.

In habits, all these fishes are very much alike. They are found in almost all seas, except those of the polar regions, and in most parts of the world are exceedingly plentiful, and everywhere form a cheap and excellent food.

THE SWORDFISH

A very odd-looking creature is this. It abounds in the Atlantic and also in the Mediterranean. Its chase affords one of the finest summer sports to be enjoyed along the south coast of New England, where it is taken by spearing from swift sailboats.

In this fish the upper jaw, which has hardly any teeth in it, is drawn out into a long, slender, pointed beak. With this "sword" the fish impales its victims, which are often of considerable size; but how it gets them off its beak again in order to eat them n.o.body seems to know.

This fish sometimes drives its way through the water with such tremendous force that it has been known to pierce the planking of a boat with its sword, which it had to snap short off in order to release itself.

In the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, London, there is part of a beam taken from the hull of a s.h.i.+p, into which one of these fishes had driven its sword to a depth of twenty-two inches.

MACKEREL

One of the best known of all the salt-water fishes is the mackerel. This fish lives in enormous shoals, which are always traveling from place to place, and visit the same parts of our coasts at about the same season in every year. Sometimes they are caught in most extraordinary numbers, so that they can be purchased at very small prices. In some cases, indeed, the catch has been so heavy that it has been found quite impossible to draw in the nets, which had to be allowed to sink to the bottom with the fishes still in them.

These nets are generally made with rather large meshes, not quite wide enough to allow the fishes to swim through. When the mackerel are caught they try to force their way through the meshes, but find that they cannot do so. They then attempt to back out. In doing this, however, the thin twine of which the net is made is almost sure to become entangled with their gill-covers, so that they are held prisoners until the net is lifted from the water.

When fully grown the mackerel is about sixteen inches long, and weighs perhaps two pounds.

SUCKING-FISHES

Of the sucking-fishes, or remoras, there are about a dozen different kinds, distinguished by the odd sucker-like disk on the upper part of the head, by means of which they can attach themselves firmly to any object to which they wish to cling. They often fasten themselves in this manner to the hulls of s.h.i.+ps, and also to the bodies of sharks and the sh.e.l.ls of turtles, and so are carried for long distances without any exertion of their own.

So firmly do these odd little fishes cling, that it is most difficult to remove them without injuring them, and the sharks and turtles have no means of forcing them to loose their hold.

It is a very odd fact that the coloring of the sucking-fishes is just the opposite of that which we find in almost all other fishes. Instead of the upper surface being dark it is light, and instead of the lower surface being light it is dark. But when one of these fishes is clinging to a shark it is the lower surface which is seen, not the upper one; for _that_ is pressed against the body of the shark; and in order to prevent its enemies from seeing and eating it, the lower parts of its body are colored just like the skin of the shark.