Page:The Book of the Aquarium and Water Cabinet.djvu/50

40 colours, and with an outline as straight and rigid as a piece of bark, he surprises you with his graceful motions as he hawks along the surface of the glass, propelled by the easy undulatory action of the caudal end of the spine. Towards dusk he wakes up from his day-light stupor, and commences his queer, but pretty gyrations; and, after gliding ghost-like all round the tank, suddenly drops down as if dead, and rests on any leaf or stone that may receive him, remaining motionless, and in any attitude—on his head, his tail, or his side—that the power of gravity may give him. Then, with an uneasy fidgetting, he flounders up again, and off he goes, as graceful as before, his pectoral fins spread out like samples of lace, looking as much like an eel with frills as it it possible to conceive. When ascending, his motion is so undulatory that he may easily be mistaken for a smooth newt, going up for a bubble. Nor is our interest in him lessened by his displays of individuality of character. He is a savage on a small scale. When he is quietly dozing, half hidden among the sand and pebbles, throw in a small red worm, and, as soon as the water is tainted with the odour of this favourite food, he is awake and on the search. A triton seizes the worm, and shakes it as a cat would a mouse. The loach hunts him down, snaps at him fiercely, and tears the worm from his mouth, and woe to any minor fish that attempts to remove it from those bearded jaws. He flounders from place to place, shaking the prey as he goes, and stirs up such a cloud from the bottom, that the beauty of the scene is spoiled for an hour; at the end of which time you will probably find him gorging the prog, half of which still protrudes from his mouth, while