Another small fish which is very common in the rock-pools is the Spotted Gunnell. It is often known as the “butter-fish,” and if you try to catch it you will very quickly learn the reason why; for it will slip between your fingers just as if it had been smeared all over with butter. Nearly all fishes are slippery, but the spotted gunnell is the most slippery of all, for its whole body is covered with such a thick coat of greasy slime that it is really hardly possible to hold it. Sometimes the spotted gunnell is light brown in colour, and sometimes it is dark brown. But you can always tell it by its shape, which is very much like that of an eel, for its body is long and flat, and is of almost the same width the whole way along, from the head to nearly the tip of the tail. Then instead of having two fins on its back quite separate from one another, as most fishes have, the spotted gunnell has one very narrow fin which runs the whole length of the body. So, you see, it is very much like an eel indeed. But you can always tell it by the row of black spots, bordered with white, on the lower edge of the back-fin. When fully grown it is about six inches long. PLATE III THE DRAGONET (1) You will not find this little fish in the rock-pools nearly so often as the gobies and the gunnells, for it generally lives at the bottom of the sea at some little distance from the shore. But now and then it comes swimming up as the tide rises, and gets left behind as it falls again, so that for a few hours, at any rate, it is obliged to stay in the pools. It is a most beautiful little creature, and, strange to say, the male is much more handsome than the female, for he is golden yellow above and white beneath, with streaks and spots of lilac upon his back and sides, while his mate is reddish-yellow all over. Besides this, he has the front spine of his first back-fin drawn out to such a length that it reaches almost to the tip of his tail, while all his other fins are very long and very spiny. He really does look, indeed, very much like a tiny water-dragon. That is the reason, of course, why he is called the “dragonet.” The female, however, has much smaller fins. Indeed, she is so very unlike the male that until a few years ago even naturalists thought that she was a different fish altogether, and she was generally known as the Fox, on account of her reddish colour. [Illustration: PLATE III 1. THE DRAGONET. 2. THE PIPE-FISH.] If you ever succeed in finding a dragonet in the rock-pools it is almost sure to be a female, for the male hardly ever comes into shallow water. PLATE III THE PIPE-FISH (2) This is a very odd-looking fish indeed--quite the most curious of all the fishes which live in the rock-pools. And as it is very common, you ought to be able to find it without any difficulty.