Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/199

Rh strange annellidous creatures, like worms and leeches, many of them banded with contrasting colours, and displaying tufts of diverging filaments resembling gorgeous flowers. Crabs with painted shells, or horrid with bristling spines; transparent shrimps studded with spots of rich and vivid colour, violet and crimson, and other crustacea of the strangest shapes, are running, swimming, and darting hither and thither; and over all play hundreds of little fishes, sparkling in the rays of a tropical sun.

Many of these are indolently floating near the surface, enjoying the warmth of the sun, motionless except that a gentle undulation of the pectorals is perceived, whereby they are enabled to maintain their equilibrium. Some with a rapid vibration of the caudal fin are shooting swiftly to and fro, leaving a long sparkling wake behind them; and others are lying half concealed beneath the projecting ledges of the rocks. But scores are more actively engaged; they are browsing on the tips of the twigs of the newly formed coral, and gnawing at the surface of the madrepores. We see them approach and try one part after another, apparently smelling at it, rejecting some and testing other portions, with epicurean gusto, nibbling here and there, and now, having found a dainty part, grinding it down with their strong teeth in right earnest. These are principally members of the Family before us, the little gaily-tinted Rock-fishes, feeding, as is their wont, upon the growing corals. The gelatinous polypes that deposit the stony secretion are so protected by the latter, that it would be impossible to get at them without