Sole (fish)

“ For whiting and silvery bream, rather fine lines are used; but we each have a heavy line for flathead, for these fish are caught in the tidal rivers on a sandy bottom up to three feet and four feet in length. They are in colour, both on back and belly, much like a sole, of great width across the shoulders, and then taper away to a very fine tail. The head is perfectly flat, very thin, and armed on each side with very sharp bones pointing tailward. ”

“ A bit of the sand-bank which elevates itself vertically in the water on a couple of side-fins is sure to attract the unfavorable attention of the neighboring dog-fish, who love soles like human epicures. Accordingly, every aspiring sole that ever sought to rise in the world with undue levity was sure to be snapped up by a passing foe, who thus effectually prevented it from passing on its own peculiar aspirations and swim bladder to future generations. ”

“ There the currents trend to the Heligoland bight, the ova floating in that direction, where the post-larval fish spend a period, again to return to the offshore spawning areas. Their chief food is molluscs of various kinds and marine worms.
The Sole has had a finely illustrated monograph devoted to it by Cunningham (Mar. Biol. Assoc) . In this its embryology, adult structure, and economy are fully treated, and various species of Solea meet descriptive notice. ”

“ The soles of the west of England and of Ireland, are quite different from the sole sent to the London market, being a much richer and thicker fish, with a black skin. For invalids or persons of a delicate stomach, the smaller and whiter sole is preferable. If the sole come to market, gutted and packed, by land-carriage, you must judge of the freshness by the smell. The best proof of their freshness, however, is the transparency of the slime on the dark side, through which the fine scales may be easily seen, and by a frothy appearance in the slime on the lower side ”

“ And all around, over the great, wide sea, these showers of living gems are leaping in and out of it. It is a most beautiful sight. The body of the fish is of a light, gleaming blue, and the delicate film-like wings, springing from just behind the gills, and extending backwards almost to the tail, set it, as they rapidly quiver, in a soft and silvery haze.
It is, of course, the pectoral fins that thus perform the office of wings, and by moving them and steering a course, their owner flies as truly, for the time, as does either a bird or a bat. ”

“ From time to time they nibble the weeds at the bottom or overhanging their nests, or dart after a fly or worm. The dorsal fin, besides answering the purpose of a keel, with the anal, serves to keep the fish upright, for in shallow water, where this is not covered, they fall on their sides. As you stand thus stooping over the sunfish in its nest, the edges of the dorsal and caudal fins have a singular dusty golden reflection, and its eyes, which stand out from the head, are transparent and colourless. ”

“ Nothing more striking could be imagined than the picture presented by the conglomeration of strange shapes and bright colors — snake-like sea eels, voracious lizard- fishes, gar-like houndfishes, with their jaws prolonged into a sharp beak; long- snouted trumpet-fishes, flounders, por- cupine-fish, bristling with spines; squirrel-fishes of the brightest and most beautiful colors — scarlet, rose color and silver, and yellow and blue ”

“ But beneath them and among them darted and flashed countless tiny living creatures, enjoying every breath of their lives;—little shell-fish opened and shut their shells to breathe and eat; at the bottom, through the transparent water, many beautiful anemones expanded their crowns of flowers; sea-snails thrust their horns out of their pretty shells, and browsed on the green sea-herbage; star-fish spread their pointed rays, beaded with orange, and clung with their hundred little cushioned fingers to the rocks ”

“ The fish sometimes came along in shoals, principally the spotted rock-fish, which seemed to be painted by nature to resemble the colours of the surrounding rocks, stones, and sea-weed. Sometimes they would appear singly, swimming hurriedly, just giving the leaves a pat with their tails, as if closing the door behind them. ”

“ During the latter part of summer and autumn, these minute shell-fish constitute the food of almost all those busy flocks that run with such activity along the sands, among the flowing and retreating waves. They are universally swallowed whole; but the action of the bird’s stomach, assisted by the shells themselves, soon reduces them to a pulp. Digging for these in the hard sand would be a work of considerable labour, whereas, when the particles are loosened by the flowing of the sea, the birds collect them with great ease and dexterity. ”

“ RAY’S SEA-BREAM. inches, and a height, including the fins, of about half as much. The eye is large, with the iris darker than the pupil; the back is very dark blue; the upper part of the head coppery-brown, with a band of blue across the forehead; the sides and belly are silvery, mingled with coppery and lake-pink hues on the upper parts, and marked with irregular dusky stripes on the sides; the dorsal and anal fins, being scaled, shine like burnished silver.
Nothing is recorded of the habits of this fish; but its flesh is said to be as excellent, as its appearance is brilliant. ”

“ Body entirely plated; peduncle of tail keeled; the three dorsal spines conspicuously serrated on their edges; anterior fin a little in advance of the base of the pectoral; insertion of ventrals in advance of the second dorsal spine—their own spines serrated on both edges; posterior margin of caudal somewhat hollowed. The colour of the freshly-caught fish is greyish-olive along the dorsal line; but on the sides, particularly in the male, it shades away into an iridescence, like that seen on mother-o’pearl, again changing to pure silvery-white on the abdomen. ”

“ He finds and collects all kinds of little shells, with which the whole ground is scattered, and that, though they are the shells of land creatures like our snails, are of nearly as many shapes and colours as the shells on our sea-beaches. In the streams that come running down out of our mountains, all as clear and bright as mirror-glass, he sees eels and little bright fish that sometimes jump together out of the surface of the brook in a spray of silver, and fresh-water prawns 420 which lie close under the stones, looking up at him through the water with eyes the colour of a jewel. ”

“ So steep is the slope that sometimes they slip and roll a little way down it, but they always recover themselves and run up it again, none the worse. In the intervals between such little mishaps they seem to be picking minute shell-fish off the rock; but what shell-fish are they? for the small white ones, with which large areas of the rock are covered, are as hard as stone, and might defy anything short of a hammer and chisel to dislodge them. It is not on these assuredly that these soft little things are feeding, and now I see that where they are most active the rock is black. ”

“ Let us now pass on to the murex and other kinds of shell-fish, which have a stronger shell, and in which Nature, in her sportive mood, has displayed a great variety—so many are the hues of their tints, so numerous are their shapes, flat, concave, long, crescent-shaped, rounded into a globe, cut through into a semi-globe, arched in the back, smooth, rough, indented, streaked, the upper part spirally wreathed, the edge projecting in a sharp point, the edge wreathed outwards, or else folding inwards. ”

“ It is very voracious, and as soon as it perceives a fish in the water, it darts down with great rapidity, and clings its prey firmly, by means of saw like indentations on its feet. The fish is brought up with one foot; the other foot enables the bird to rise to the surface, and by an adroit movement, the fish is loosened from the foot and grasped in the bird’s mouth. ”

“ They spring from the sea by a quick stroke of the tail, and, with fins outspread, are able to sustain and prolong their leap for a minute or more. The fins measure several inches across and become transparent in the sun, but do not flap like the wings of a bird. As the fish rise only from six inches to a few feet from the water, their flight, in a choppy or rough ocean, is generally not more than from two to twenty feet, as they disappear on coming in contact with a wave. ”

“ At each tide the takes of fish are more or less plentiful, and at low-water the women and children may be seen picking up shell-fish with their toes, for practice has enabled them to use their toes as deftly as their fingers, or gathering in the sand-crabs and eatable seaweed. ”

“ There are but few natural orders of fishes—and they divide themselves for the purposes of our enquiry chiefly into the Acanthopterygii, or those that possess bony skeletons, with prickly, spinous processes on the dorsal fins, such as the perch, the mullet, and the gurnard; the Malacopterygii, or soft-finned fishes, including the carp, the salmon, &c.; and the Chondropterygii, with cartilaginous spines and bones, embracing such fish as the sturgeon, shark, and skate. ”

“ He has one eye on each side, like other fish, only one eye is higher up than the other, and the single fin on its back and the one under its body reach almost from head to tail. In this way he swims for about a week, but he is so thin and deep, and his fins are so small, that swimming edgewise is an effort, and soon he falls down on one side, generally the left, to the bottom of the sea. ”

“ Whenever we find in a fish long delicate filaments, developed in connection with the fins or the extremity of the tail, we may conclude that it is an inhabitant of still water and of quiet habits. Many deep-sea fishes (Trachypteridæ, Macruridæ, Ophidiidæ, Bathypterois) are provided with such filamentous prolongations, the development of which is perfectly in accordance with their sojourn in the absolutely quiet waters of abyssal depths. ”

“ When verging on half an inch long the body broadens, the eye has got well towards the right, the dorsal fin has advanced to its hinder border, the lateral line looms up, and brown pigment is diffused throughout the upper or right surface of the fish. ”

“ When the fish is in a state of quiet, its dull colors present nothing remarkable; but if two be brought together, or if one sees its own image in a looking-glass, the little creature becomes suddenly excited, the raised fins and the whole body shine with metallic colors of dazzling beauty, while the projected gill membrane, waving like a black frill round the throat, adds something of grotesqueness to the general appearance. ”

“ The bony fishes (Teleostomi) .—The bony or true fishes are distinguished from the lampreys and sharks and rays by having in general the skeleton bony, not cartilaginous, the skull provided with membrane bones, and the eggs small and many. In this group are included all the fishes of our fresh-water lakes, ponds, and streams as well as most of the marine forms. Fish life, being spent under [Pg 282] water, is not familiar to most of us, and beginning students are rarely helped enough in getting acquainted with the different kinds and the interesting habits of fishes. ”

“ Large fish can spring much higher than small ones; but their powers are limited or augmented, according to the depth of water they spring from. They rise rapidly from the bottom of the water to the surface, by means of rowing and sculling, as it were, with their fins and tails ”

“ When near the coast they conceal themselves between corals, stones, or fucus, holding on to the ground by means of their arm-like pectoral fins. Their coloration is so similar to their surroundings that it is hardly possible to distinguish the fish from a stone or coral overgrown with vegetation. Their way of attracting and seizing their prey is evidently the same as in the other fishes of this family. The extraordinary range of some of the species which inhabit the Atlantic as well as the Indo-Pacific Oceans, is the consequence of their habit of attaching themselves to floating objects. ”

“ These classes are distinguished, as the English words imply, by their having the rays of their fins soft and flexible or hard and spine-like. The investigator may determine their peculiarities by pressing strongly upon the points of the fin rays; if nature intimates that his organism is suffering, the fish is a acanthop, etc.; if not, why not. [8]
The location of the fins of the fish mark the subdivisions of the families. ”

“ The big eyes, one on each side, stand out without eyelids, but the fish can move them at will, so that once in a while he seems to wink. There isn't much of a nose between the eyes, but the mouth is very evident, and the fish opens and shuts it as it breathes. We soon see that it breathes water, taking it in through the mouth and letting it flow over the gills, and then out through the opening behind the gill-covers. ”

“ The Fish makes a floating nest, emerging on three sides, over which the male keeps a fierce watch; the recently-hatched larvae are remarkable for the enormous size of the yolk-sac, which hangs down, acting as a sort of anchor, and for the presence of long external branchial filaments, as in Selachian embryos. The Fish propels itself through the water entirely by the action of its dorsal fin, forwards and backwards with equal facility; when swimming rapidly backwards, it may be seen to use the end of its tail as a feeler to guide the way. ”