Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/121

Rh than the countries whose shores are bathed by these waters. If the hot countries of Africa and America have, among their feathered tribes, their souimangas, their humming-birds, their cotingas, and their tanagers, the intermediate seas support

myriads of the finny race still more brilliant, whose scales reflect the tints of metals and precious stones, heightened in effect by spots and bands of a more sombre hue, distributed with a symmetry and variety equally admirable. The