of the fish flashes with ever-changing hues upon the eye—a wondrous pantomimic mixture of glancing blue and gold, and silver and purple, blended into one great burning glow of harmonious colour, lighted into brilliant life by the soft rays of the newly-risen sun. But, alas for the painter! unless he can instantaneously fix the burnished mass on his canvas, the light of its colour will be extinguished, and its beauty be dimmed, long before the boat has reached the harbour. The brightly-coloured fish of the tropics are indeed gorgeous, as is the plumage of tropical birds; but as regards excellence of flavour, beautifully-blended colours, and especially as a food power, they cannot for a moment be compared with that plentiful poor man’s fish—the beautiful common herring of our British waters. If the breathing apparatus of a fish were to become dry the animal would at once be suffocated. A fish when in the water has very little weight to support, as its specific gravity is about the same as that of the water in which it lives, and the bodies of these animals are so flexible as to aid them in all their movements, while the various fins assist either in balancing the body or in helping it to progress. The motion of a fish is excessively rapid; it can dash along in the water with lightning-like velocity. Many of our sea fish are curiously shaped, such as the hammer-headed shark, the globe-fish, the monkfish, the angel-fish, etc.; then we have the curious forms of the rays, the Pluronectidæ, and of some others that I may call “fancy fish;” but fish of all kinds are admirably adapted to their mode of life and the place where they live—as for instance, in a cave where light has never penetrated there have been found fish without eyes. Fresh-water fish do not, however, vary much in shape, most of them being very elegant. Fish are nearly insensible to pain, and are cold-blooded, their blood being only two degrees warmer than the element in which they swim. It is worthy of being noted also that fish have small brains in comparison to the size of their bodies—considerably smaller in proportion than in the case of the birds or mammalia, but the nerves communicating with the brain are as large in fish, proportionately, as in either the birds or mammalia. So far as personal knowledge goes, I believe the senses of sight and hearing are well developed in most fish, as also those of smell and taste, particularly the sense of smell, which chiefly guides them to their food. We may take for granted, I think, that fish have a very keen sense of smell—more so than most other animals; and thus it is that strong-smelling baits are so successful in fishing. The French people, for instance, when fishing for sprats and sardines, bait the ground with prepared cod-roe, which, by the way, adds very largely to the expense of that branch of fishing in the Bay of Biscay. I may also remind my readers, as an evidence of fish having a strong sense