the opposite direction, as if to keep up such a balance of deformity as that which the breast-hump of a hunchback forms to the hump behind—is in keeping with the squint eyes. The jaws are strangely asymmetrical. In symmetrical fishes the two bones that compose the anterior half of the lower jaw are as perfectly correspondent in form and size as the left hand or left foot is correspondent, in the human subject, to the _right_ hand or _right_ foot; but not such their character in the flounder. The one is a broad, short, nearly straight bone; the other is larger, narrower, and bent like a bow; and while the one contains only from four to six teeth, the other contains from thirty to thirty-five. Scarcely in the entire ichthyic kingdom are there any two jaws that less resemble one another than the two halves of the jaw of the flounder, turbot, halibut, or plaice. The intermaxillary bones are equally ill matched: the one is fully twice the size of the other, and contains about thrice as many teeth. That bilateral symmetry of the skeleton which is so _invariable_ a characteristic of the vertebrata, that ordinary observers, who have eyes for only the rare and the uncommon, fail to remark it, but which a Newton could regard as so wonderful, and so thoroughly in harmony with the uniformity of the planetary system, has scarce any place in the asymmetrical head of the flounder. There exists in some of our north country fishing villages an ancient apologue, which, though not remarkable for point or meaning, at least serves to show that this peculiar example of distortion the rude fishermen of a former age were observant enough to detect. Once on a time the fishes met, it is said, to elect a king; and their choice fell on the herring. “The herring king!” contemptuously exclaimed the flounder, a fish of consummate vanity, and greatly piqued on this occasion that its own presumed claims should have been overlooked; “where, then, am I?” And straightway, in punishment of its conceit and rebellion, “its eyes turned to the back of its head.” Here is there a story palpably founded on the degradation of misplacement and distortion, which originated ages ere the naturalist had recognized either the term or the principle.