Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/125

Rh likely to be observed (and eaten) if his back is dark and his under-surface white and silvery.

Albino soles are far rarer than doubles, and seldom occur except in very young and foolish specimens. Naturally an albino forms an exceptionally sure mark for his enemies to hawk at, and he is therefore usually devoured at an early stage of his unhappy existence, before he has time to develop properly into a good specimen. For the same reason adult white rabbits are very rare in the wild state, because they form such excellent targets for owls in their early infancy. Rabbits, when tamed, as we all know, tend to "sport" in color to a surprising extent; but this tendency is repressed in the wild condition by the selective action of the common owl, which promptly picks off every rabbit that does not harmonize well in the dusk of evening with the bracken and furze among whose stalks it feeds.

All the flat-fish are carnivorous. They live chiefly off cockles and other mollusks, off lugs, and lob-worms, or off small shrimp-like creatures and other crustaceans. In summer-time soles resort to banks and shallow spots near the mouths of rivers to deposit their spawn. They are obliged to do this in shallow waters, because, like most other fish, they are very unnatural mothers, and leave the sun to do the whole work of hatching for them. To be sure, there are some few right minded fish which take a proper view of their parental responsibilities, such as the pipe-fishes, which carry about their unhatched eggs in a bag, sometimes borne by the affectionate mother, but oftener still by the good father, a perfect model to his human confrères. Or again, the familiar little stickleback, who builds a regular nest for the reception of the spawn, and positively sits upon it like a hen, at the same time waving his fins vigorously backward and forward so as to keep up a good supply of oxygen. But soles and most other fish consider that their parental duties are quite at an end as soon as they have deposited their spawn in safety on a convenient sunny shallow.

This fact produces a sort of annual migration among the soles and other flat-fish. In spring, when all nature is beginning to wake up from its winter sleep, the soles seek the shoal water, which forms their spawning-ground; and, therefore, in April, May, June, and July, the British sole is chiefly trolled for off the Dogger Bank and the other great submerged flats of the North Sea. But when November comes on again the soles once more retire for the season into winter quarters in the deep water for the purpose of hibernating during the foodless period. The North Sea soles (in whose habits and manners the London public is most profoundly interested) generally resort for their long snooze to a deep depression known as the Silver Pits, lying close beside the Dogger Bank. These Silver Pits are so called because when they were first discovered (about the year 1843) they formed a sort of Big Bonanza for the lucky fishermen who originally resorted to them. There the soles lay, huddled together for the sake of warmth,