But there is one even more cunning than they, lying hidden in the seaweed or the sand--a large, flat, soft fish, about three feet in length, and quite half as broad as he is long, with a soft stumpy tail, stretching out behind, and a kind of wrist-joint to arm and leg fins, by which he can creep noiselessly along. His wide mouth is gaping open, so that a two-foot rule could be passed crossways into it, and his pointed teeth are bent back to allow his prey to enter. But how is this prey to be caught, for he is not going to move to fetch it? Notice all round his head and his body, the skin is fringed like blades of seaweed and plays about in the water; while above his head and back the spines of his fin stand up quite separate, and the front one is tapering and long like a fishing-rod, with a lappet at the end like a bait. And now, as the shallow water ripples over his head, the lappet plays to and fro, and the unwary fish come up to nibble at it, lower and lower he waves it, and the nibblers follow, till, opening his wide gape, he gulps them down, even if they are as large as himself, and lies passive with his swollen stomach till they are digested. This is our own Fishing-frog,[46] of which one was once found with seventy herrings in his stomach. He has relations all over the world--in the open sea and down in its depths, and all of them more or less follow his fishing habits. Yet there is no creation of special parts for these strange weapons; the altered back-fin and the jagged skin do all the work, just as in some curious fish of the weever family in the tropics, called the Stargazers,[47] the feelers on their lips, longer than those of other fishes, and a lengthened thread from below the tongue, play in the watery currents and attract the small animals, while the fish with upturned eyes watches them as they are lured to destruction. Lastly, among all these curious forms upon our shores there is an abundance of flat-fish--soles and turbot, brill and plaice--flapping along at the bottom, covering themselves with sand, or rising up with that strange wavy movement of the whole body in which they use what look like long side-fins, but which are really the back-fin and the belly-fin. [Illustration: Fig. 12. The Common Sole.[48] Above are two small soles as they swim when young. At that time they are not larger than a grain of rice.--(_Adapted from Figuier and Malm._) ] If we wanted to pick out the strangest and strongest proof of how the shape of fish is altered to suit their wants, we need seek no further than the flat-fish.