Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/273

Rh however, retained one mussel in the basin, and offered it to the Cod, in order to see how, with its broad mouth and short tongue, it would reach it. The Cod blew into the basin (a small slop-basin), and the re-action forced the mussel out of it, and the Cod seized it immediately. This fish allowed me to pat it on the back, and rested its head upon the stone on which I was standing, just like a dog. The other fish came to me and fed on the mussels I threw to them, but would not let me handle them, though I patted some of them."

The analogous case of the Elephant that blew the sixpence out of the angle of the shelf on which it was placed, when it was too close to the wall to admit the finger of his trunk, will doubtless occur to many of our readers. We are, however, much more surprised to hear of such an effort of reasoning power in a Cod-fish than in an Elephant.

(Flat-fishes.)

The Turbot, the Sole, and the Flounder, are so familiar to every one, as the commonest fishes at our tables, that probably few think of the extraordinary anomaly presented by their structure, or remember that they are perfectly unique among vertebrate animals. We see that one side is dark and positively coloured, the other is white or slightly tinged with a fleshy hue, and we are apt to suppose that they offer no greater