Fish not only have their own especial shape of scales, but their especial color, and such colors have their especial place on the fish. One flat, brown fish has all the under side of its body white, but spots of red, like sealing wax, are laid all over the brown side, as if you had dropped red wax upon it. When you see a smoked and salted herring hung up for sale, you are not likely to guess what a beautiful thing it was, when living in its water home. It had a coat of blue, green, and silver, and gem-like eyes. The eye of a dead fish is sunken and dull. The eye of a living fish is full, and gleaming with light. There is a little fish called a wrasse which looks as if made out of a rainbow. It is dressed in bright blue, gold, bronze, and white. The red bream is of a fine rose-red color, with silver sides. Its luminous eyes are set in golden rings. The perch has dark, shining bands on its silver coat, and it has gay, red fins. The gray mullet is a quaker fish, trim, grave, quiet in its style, but lovely in its shape and in the rainbow lights along parts of its body. Once I saw in the water a fish called a gurnard. He seemed to have borrowed a sunset to dress himself in. His scales were deep red and bronze. There was a vivid blue on the edges of his fins. The fins were in shape and coloring like a butterfly’s wings. I never saw a boy who did not think that a trout was one of the prettiest things ever made. Very much of the beauty of fishes lies in the wonderful scales. But you must examine scales for yourselves. If you have a microscope to look at them with, you will be full of delight and surprise at what you see. Once I looked through a very powerful microscope, and thought I was looking at a lump of half-melted gold set full of fine jewels. But it was the scale of a fish. I will now leave the scales, and tell you a little about the teeth of fish. Fish have a great many teeth. Their mouths are for the most part hard and horny, and so covered with teeth that it is not likely that they have very much sense of taste. Still there are some kinds of fish that are almost, if not quite, toothless. If you open the mouth of a sea-trout you will find that it is set entirely round, with sharp, strong teeth. Then if you stretch the mouth open and look into it, you will see that there is another row of teeth set all round a bone inside the upper jaw. Look still farther in, and you will see a row of teeth on the middle bone in the roof of the mouth. Look still beyond, and you will see a row of teeth on each side of the tongue. Some fish, besides all these teeth, have the tongue quite covered with teeth. Others, that eat vegetables, have little fine teeth all down the sides of the throat. The French call such teeth as these, “teeth in the velvet.” Some fish have the entire mouth and throat lined with teeth.