obtuse shape of the head, strongly remind one
of the parrot. The mouth in all these fish is
very like a beak. Nor is this any forced
comparison; it is owing to the teeth and jaws being
all fused into one, and the effect of this is
heightened by the rostral lip covering the jaw
to a great extent, while the maxillary or
internal lip is reduced to a mere slip of
membrane. Oken, the German naturalist who
according to his own account was inspired, and
who had scarcely established a theory before he
began to perceive the absolute necessity for
immediately overturning it, lumped all the scari
together under the name of "insect fish"—for
what reason it is difficult to surmise. As a
natural sequel, he afterwards elevated both
them and the next family the reader will come
to in this paper (the labroids), to the rank
of "bird fish." Some of the old writers, with
equal accuracy, described the scarus as a fish
that feedeth on herbs and cheweth the cud like
a beast—an idea to which still later writers
clung, calling it the ruminant among fishes;
the fact is, that the scarus, though it feeds
upon the sea-algæ, also eats the molluscs and
polypi; for which reason the fishermen take it
in bamboo creels set among the roots of the
polypi; never finding it in their large drag-
nets at sea. It is restricted to such articles
of diet by the strange conformation of the
mouth, which, though strong, is too small to
allow of the seizing of large fish. In order to
masticate this rather tough food in comfort and
safety, the scarus is furnished with teeth in the
upper part of its gullet.

Next to the scari come the labroids, the name
being taken from the labrum, a fish
mentioned by Pliny, and rather vaguely described
as a kind of ravenous fish, seeing that every
fish is by nature utterly and entirely ravenous.
The elegant trout who flies in the wildest
terror if you show the tip of your nose, will
eat nearly his own weight of bleak and dace
on a hot still June evening. A pike has been
known to rush at a fish well-nigh the size of
himself, and even to dash at a mule's nose!
I have known a fishing-frog lose its life in an
insane attempt to swallow a wooden scoop, the
proprietor of which objected to the proceeding.
It is but a short time since an account appeared
in the Times of a fish which had swallowed,
among other matters, two broken bottles, a
quart pot, a sheep's head, a triangular piece of
earthenware, and a lobster, while in its liver the
spine of a skate was comfortably embedded!
These labroids are fish with a free upper lip,
which, like the lower one, looks in some species
as if the animal had just been severely stung by
some spiteful jelly-fish; the jaws in certain
species are shaped like those of a pig. There
is frequently a long spine at the beginning
of the dorsal fin. One of their most
distinguishing marks, in the eye of a naturalist, is,
that they possess a three-cornered or narrow
gullet bone, set with grain-like or globular
teeth. The gilt-head, the bass, and the wrasse
may be familiar specimens to many readers. If
there be fish more beautiful and strangely
coloured than the scari, we find them here.
Some of the blues and reds, the rose and orange
tints, are marvels; and yet it is hard to say
whether some of the dark-coloured fish are not
even more to be admired than the showy ones.
Dr. Bleeker has added more than a hundred
new species, and each species is a study in itself.
I will confine myself to one, and select for
description the iulis lunaris, or the crescent-
tailed wrasse. The head is dark green, beautifully
marked with bent irregular bars of a
damask colour; the body is of a lighter green,
with narrow rose-coloured bars cutting each
scale vertically. The dorsal fin is bright yellow
at the top; below this, it is bright blue;
beneath this, it is deep rose, and again blue. The
fin underneath, is damask, blue, and bright
yellow; from its beginning run two rose-
coloured bars, extending as far as the head.
The tail, which curves broadly outwards, and
ends in two long points which then bend
towards each other like the limbs of a pair of
old-fashioned compasses, is of bright yellow in
the middle; outside this, it is coloured Indian
red; outside of all, it is streaked with a pale blue.
It is a finely-proportioned fish, about the build
of a well grown dace, and is found over a wide
extent of water.

Like the scari, these fish are not valued for
their flavour. Except a few species of a pale
gold colour, with remarkably large red spots
(the hemipleronoti), which in the Molucca
Islands are called ikkan bokki, or "fish of the
princess," on account of their delicate flavour,
they are rarely eaten, except by natives and
Chinese. Here, the classical schoolboy will of
course interfere, and tell us that the lupus, or
sea-dace of the Romans, one of this family and
an inhabitant of the Mediterranean, was greatly
esteemed for its flavour. Don't believe it.
You will find it like a bad roach, and a poor
earthy fish. The princess's fish live at such great
depths that they can never be extensively made
use of, or sold at a reasonable price. Out of the
hundred and twenty-six species now known—
seventy-nine of which have been discovered by
Dr. Bleeker—only five contribute in any material
degree to the food of the people.

The labroids are followed by the silurians,
something between a salmon and a pike, with
beards and without scales; great creatures with
a fleshy eel-like look, and a fat fin on the hinder
part of the back. Every person who is a
nember of the Acclimatisation Society, or the
Thames Angling Association, or who has a
friend who is a member of either, or who has
taken any interest in the proceedings of these
capital institutions, has heard of the silurus,
which, if it thrive here as it is said to do in
Hungary, will have to be caught with a cod-
line, and be hoisted out with a steam-crane. If
the reader wants to see a few species, he can
gratify his taste in Dr. Bleeker's work. These
fish swarm in the waters of Borneo and Sumatra,
not only in the sweet and brackish water, but
even in the seas, and the laborious naturalist