Flounder

“ Although the flounder is perfectly quiet, almost lying motionless at the bottom of the tank, only occasionally moving his small protruding eye, no sooner is some small fly thrown into the tank, than the flounder at once darts in that direction, and attacks its prey with a snap. ”

“ One of the most beautiful motion-masters I ever beheld, sweeping through his green bath in harmonious curves, now turning his black glistening back to me, now exhibiting his fair white chest, in every movement active and graceful, turned out to be our old homely friend the flounder, whom we have all gobbled up out of his bath of water souchy at Greenwich, without having the slightest idea that he was a beauty.
As is the race of man, so is the race of flounders. ”

“ The flounder protects himself by covering his body, except the eyes, with sand. Flounders live on sandy bottoms, some in shallow water, while others are found in deepest parts of the ocean. If flounders are placed in an aquarium and arranged so the light can fall on the under side of their bodies, this, too, becomes dark, much like the other side. ”

“ Only the larger species are taken with hook and line, the smaller flounders being usually speared by the Indians. And a pleasant sight it is, too, to watch a little fleet of canoes, each one slowly paddled by a dusky squaw gliding along the sandy shallows, the spearman in the bow ‘prodding’ for the fish hidden in the mud138 and sand. The flounder, thus disturbed, scuds along the bottom, and stirs up the sand like a trail, marking its line of progress. ”

“ Interpretation of the Salmon's Story
When an animal frequents two different haunts, in one of which it breeds, it is very often safe to say that the breeding-place represents the original home. The flounder is quite comfortable far up the rivers, but it has to go to the shore-waters to spawn, and there is no doubt that the flounder is a marine fish which has recently learned to colonise the fresh waters. Its relatives, like plaice and sole, are strictly marine. ”

“ The Development of Flounders.—In the great group of flounders and soles (Heterosomata) the body is greatly compressed and the species swim on one side or lie flat on the bottom, with one side uppermost. This upper side is colored like the bottom, sand-color, gray, or brown, while the lower side is mostly white. Both eyes are brought around to the upper side by a twisting of the cranium and a modification or division of the frontal bones. When the young flounder is hatched it is translucent and symmetrical, swimming vertically in the water, with one eye on either side of the head. ”

“ There was once on a time a Fisherman who lived with his wife in a miserable hovel close by the sea, and every day he went out fishing. And once as he was sitting with his rod, looking at the clear water, his line suddenly went down, far down below, and when he drew it up again, he brought out a large Flounder. Then the Flounder said to him, "Hark, you Fisherman, I pray you, let me live, I am no Flounder really, but an enchanted prince. What good will it do you to kill me? I should not be good to eat, put me in the water again, and let me go." ”

“ The principal distinction between the plaice and the Flounder consists in the former having a row of six tubercles behind the left eye, of which this fish is entirely destitute; it is also a little longer in the body, and, when full-grown, somewhat thicker. The back is of a dark olive colour, spotted. In taste, they are reckoned more delicate than the plaice. They live long after being taken out of their element, and are often cried in the streets of London, but they seldom appear on the tables of the rich and dainty. ”

“ It is well known that in the very young flounder the body rests upright in the water. After a little there is a tendency to turn to one side and the lower eye begins its migration to the other side, the interorbital bones or part of them moving before [Pg 174] it. In most flounders the eye seems to move over the surface of the head, before the dorsal fin, or across the axil of its first ray. In the tropical genus Platophrys the movement of the eye is most easily followed, as the species reach a larger size than do most flounders before the change takes place. ”

“ The flounder inhabits every part of the British sea, and is found, although at a great distance, in all the rivers that communicate with it; numbers of them that are not taken, lose themselves, continuing and breeding with vast fecundity in the rivers, and those grow to be the largest and best flavoured. ”

“ Soles and other flat-fish similarly resemble the sands or banks on which they lie, and accommodate themselves specifically to the particular colour of their special bottom. Thus the flounder imitates the muddy bars at the mouths of rivers, where he loves to half bury himself in the congenial ooze; the sole, who rather affects clean hard sand-banks, is simply sandy and speckled with grey ”

“ Flounder.—The other is the flounder (Pleuronectes flesus) , the only flat-fish which ascends British rivers. It is common a long way up such rivers as the Severn, far above tidal influence, and it will take almost any flesh-bait used on the bottom. A flounder of 1 ℔ is, in a river, a large one, but heavier examples are sometimes caught.
Eel.—The eel (Anguilla vulgaris) is regarded by the angler more as a nuisance than a sporting fish, but when of considerable size (and it often reaches a weight of 8 ℔ or more) it is a splendid fighter and stronger than almost any fish that swims. ”

“ The fish is in appearance a kind of compromise between the flounder and the turbot, though greatly exceeding both in size, indeed the flounder bears about the same proportion to the hollibut as the chaffinch does to the pheasant. Considerable quantities of hollibut are taken off the Orkney and Shetland Isles, on the lines employed for cod-fishing. Great numbers of skate, tusk, ling, coal-fish, and others are also thus caught. The baits are pieces of fresh herring or mackerel, and shell-fish such as clams or whelks. ”

“ We travelled less than a ri an hour, as it was a mere flounder either among rocks or in deep mud, the woman in her girt-up dress and straw sandals trudging bravely along, till she suddenly flung away the rope, cried out, and ran backwards, perfectly scared by a big grey snake, with red spots, much embarrassed by a large frog which he would not let go, though, like most of his kind, he was alarmed by human approach, and made desperate efforts to swallow his victim and wriggle into the bushes. ”

“ FLOUNDER-FISHING BY DAY.Flounder-fishing in the daytime is good sport. Find out the nearest camp of Indians there on the beach, crowded under a shelter of sea-worn planks, a few fir-boughs, and a tattered blanket; the smell of tainted fish pollutes the air, and a heap of flounders, each with the triangular spear-mark, attests the skill of last night's fishermen. ”

“ As usual with all of the flatfishes, the dorsal and anal fins are very long, horizontally, the color on the exposed or right side is rusty brown, obscurely mottled, with the under or left side white.
The flounder is partial to sheltered coves and quiet bays, preferring bottoms of sand or mud, though sometimes it is found in rocky situations. It is sedentary in its habits, partially burying itself in the sand or mud, where it remains during the entire year, feeding on minute shells, crustaceans, worms, etc. ”

“ Cut four fillets from one large flounder, place in a buttered pan, season with salt and pepper, add a glassful of claret and one-half cup of water, cover with buttered paper, put in oven and bake until done. Then place the fish on a platter. Make a sauce Génoise from the head and bones of the flounder, add the tail of a lobster cut Julienne style, and four heads of fresh mushrooms cut in the same manner and sautéed in butter. ”

“ The Halibut, king of Pleuronectidæ in size, when about a foot long, are occasionally found shorewards, but the adults are quite deeper sea dwellers, and are fish and crustacean feeders. The Flounder, though closely allied to the Plaice, differs widely in habits and migration. It arrives early at maturity, and is exceptionally fecund. There is much disparity in the sexes, the females largest, the males most numerous. ”

“ The wonderful colors and color patterns of the tropical fish of the reef, or of the open water forms like the mouse-fish of the Sargossa Sea, often render them more or less completely hidden from the foraging enemy. A flounder looks like a fish which was originally symmetrical, but which had come to lie flat on its side upon the bottom, whereupon the eye underneath had left its original place to appear on the upper surface. ”

“ Any one of numerous species of flounders more or less related to the true turbots, as the American plaice, or summer flounder (see Flounder) , the halibut, and the diamond flounder (Hypsopsetta guttulata) of California. ”

“ Instead he is as jolly as a sand man and amply able to take care of his wreck of a body, which is flat indeed but fat. Necessity is the mother of invention. When the flounder sees food that he wants he falls upon it and holds it down with ease while he devours it. ”

“ An east coast fisherman will give the preference at any time, for his own eating that is, to a flounder, however flabby and flaccid, over a whiting or plaice; he will eat the hake rather than the finest cod or haddock, and considers the wing of a skate, dried in the smoke until it is of the colour of the darkest mahogany, with a bouquet the very opposite, be sure, of the ottar of roses, a tit-bit with which, in his estimation, neither sea-trout, mackerel, nor turbot can for a moment bear comparison. Fishermen, too, we have observed with some surprise, seldom eat their fish fresh ”

“ The lower and upper surfaces of the flounder, the one protected and the other exposed to the light, give the most striking example, and the argument is clinched here by the fact, noted by Cunningham, that a flounder whose lower side is for long periods exposed to the light takes on color. ”

“ No fish seems to possess a more complete power over its dingy coat than a very abundant one in the estuary of the Conon—the common flounder. Standing on the bank, I have startled these creatures from off the patch of bottom on which they lay [Pg 206] —visible to only a very sharp eye—by pitching a very small pebble right over them. Was the patch a pale one—for a minute or so they carried its pale colour along with them into some darker tract, where they remained distinctly visible from the contrast, until, gradually acquiring the deeper hue, they again became inconspicuous. ”

“ Thus the Pleuronectes flesus is the common flounder of English terminology, found along the coasts of northern Europe from the Bristol Channel to Iceland. It is particularly partial to fresh water, ascending the Rhine as far as Cologne. It rarely exceeds a length of 12 in. ”

“ The tail, too, possesses, in consequence of the twist, not the vertical position of other fish-tails, but [188] is spread out horizontally, like the tails of the cetacea. It is however, in the head of the flounder and its cogeners that we find the more extraordinary distortions exemplified. In order to accommodate it to the general twist, which rendered lateral what in other fishes is dorsal and abdominal, and dorsal and abdominal what in other fishes is lateral, one half its features had to be twisted to the one side, and the other half to the other. ”

“ Among aquatic animals we have fishes that hug close to the bottom and acquire color and pattern which admirably protect them, and the flounder has even gone to such an extreme in this direction as to have one of its eyes transferred from its normal position to the opposite side of the head. ”

“ That fishes assume, in a great degree, the colour of the channel over which they lie, is known to many practical observers. We have ourselves frequently frightened small flounders from their propriety with our shoe-points, while angling near the mouths of rivers, and so exactly did their colour accord with the shingle beneath our feet, that we could not detect their presence but by their own betraying movements. ”

“ Halibut, cut in three-fourths inch slices, is more often cut in fillets than any kind of fish, and fillets are frequently rolled. When flounder is cut in fillets it is served under the name of fillet of sole. Sole found in English waters is much esteemed, and flounder is our nearest approach to it.
WAYS OF COOKING FISH To Cook Fish in Boiling Water. Small cod, haddock, or cusk are cooked whole in enough boiling water to cover, to which is added salt and lemon juice or vinegar. Salt gives flavor; lemon juice or vinegar keeps the flesh white. ”

“ Above the noise of the traffic on the quay his voice rose, piercing. “I presenta. Flounder, all aliva. I give ze fish. You giva”—with suddenness he comically lowered his voice—“tobacco, rumma—what you like.” He lay the gift of flounders on the wooden stage. “Where I get him? I catcha him. Where you get ze tobacco, rumma? You catcha him. Heh?”
Rock Cod, having made fast the boat, was now standing beside his mate.
[Pg 63] A sailor picked up the flounders, and, turning back the gills of one of them, said, “Fresh, eh, Macaroni?” ”

“ They resemble, in their conformation but not in their color, our flounders or flat-fish, which some of you may have caught, and many of you have eaten. These fish lie on one side, at the very bottom of the water in which they live, and consequently one eye would be buried in the mud and would be of no use, if they were formed like common fish. But as their enemies and their food must come from above them, they need both their eyes placed so that they can always look upwards. ”

“ Frequently, while on wet sea-beaches, it pats the sand, to force out the insects; and in one instance I saw an individual run from the water to the dry sand, with a small flounder in its bill, which it afterwards devoured.
This bird forms no regular nest, but is contented with scratching the dry sand above high-water mark, so as to form a slight hollow, in which it deposits its eggs. On the coast of Labrador, and in the Bay of Fundy, it lays its eggs on the bare rock. When the eggs are on sand, it seldom sits on them during the heat of the sun ”