The Flounder, one of the most common of the flat-fish, is found in the sea and near the mouths of large streams all round our coast, particularly where the bottom is soft, whether of sand, clay, or mud. It also ascends the rivers, and is caught in considerable quantities from Deptford to Richmond by Thames fishermen, who, with the assistance of an apprentice, use a net of a particular sort, called a tuck-sean. "One end of this net," says Yarrell, "is fixed for a short time by an anchor or grapple, and its situation marked by a floating buoy; the boat is then rowed or rather sculled by the apprentice in a circle, the fisherman near the stern handing out and clearing the net: when the circle is completed and a space enclosed, the net is hauled in near the starting-point in a direction across the fixed end."
The Sail-fluke, a species of flat-fish common among the Orkneys, where it is highly prized as an article of food, its flesh being firm and white, is remarkable for its curious habit of coming ashore spontaneously, with its tail erected above the water, like a boat under sail, whence it has derived its name. This it does generally in calm weather, and on sandy shores, and the country people residing near such places train their dogs to catch it. In North Ronaldshay, the northernmost island of the group, a considerable supply is obtained in an original manner: thus described in a letter from a resident inserted in Yarrell's "British Fishes:" "In the winter and early spring, a pair of black-headed gulls take possession of the South Bay, drive away all interlopers, and may be seen at daybreak every morning, beating from side to side, on the wing, and never both in one place, except in the act of crossing as they pass. The sail-fluke skims the ridge of the wave towards the shore with its tail raised over its back, and when the wave recedes is left on the sand, into which it burrows so suddenly and completely that, though I have watched its approach, only once have I succeeded in finding its burrow.
"The gull, however, has a surer eye, and casting like a hawk pounces on the fluke, from which, by one stroke of its bill, it extracts the liver. If not disturbed, the gull no sooner gorges the luscious morsel than it commences dragging the fish to some outlying rock, where he and his consort may discuss it at leisure. By robbing the black backs, I have had the house supplied daily with this excellent fish, in weather during which no fishing-boat could put to sea. Close to the beach of South Bay, a stone wall has been raised to shelter the crops from the sea-spray. Behind this we posted a smart lad, who kept his eye on the soaring gulls. The moment one of the birds made its well-known swoop, the boy rushed to the sea-strand shouting out with all his might. He was usually in time to scare the gull away and secure the fluke, but almost in every case with the liver torn out. If the gull by chance succeeded in carrying his prey off the rock, he and his partner set up a triumphant cackling, as if deriding the disappointed lad."
Thornback.
The Rays resemble the side-swimmers by the flatness of their form, but differ widely from them in many other particulars. Like the sharks and sturgeons, they belong to the cartilaginous fishes, and as their branchiæ adhere to the cells, these respiratory membranes are not furnished with a gill-cover, but communicate freely with the water by means of five spiracles on either side. More unsightly fishes can hardly be conceived. The rhomboidal broad body, the long narrow tail frequently furnished with two and sometimes three small fins, and mostly armed with one or more rows of sharp spines along its whole length, the dirty colour, and the thick coat of slime with which it is covered, render them pre-eminently disgusting. Their mode of defending themselves is very effectual, and forms a striking contrast to the helplessness of the flat fish. The point of the nose and the base of the tail are bent upwards towards each other, and the upper surface of the body being then concave, the tail is lashed about in all directions over it, and the rows of sharp spines frequently inflict severe wounds.
Eleven species of rays are found on the British coasts, some, like the skates, with a perfectly smooth skin; others, like the thornback, with an upper surface studded with spines, and some, like the sting-ray, with a tail still more powerfully armed with a long serrated spine: a formidable weapon, which the fish strikes with the swiftness of an arrow into its prey or enemy, when with its winding tail it makes the capture secure. The lacerations inflicted by the tropical sting-rays produce the most excruciating tortures. An Indian who accompanied Richard Schomburgk on his travels through Guiana, being hit by one of these fishes while fording a river, tottered to the bank, where he fell upon the ground and rolled about on the sand with compressed lips in an agony of pain. But no tear started from the eye, no cry of anguish issued from the breast, of the stoical savage. An Indian boy wounded in the some manner, but less able to master his emotions, howled fearfully, and flung himself upon the sand, biting it in the paroxysm of his anguish. Although both had been hit in the foot, they felt the severest pain in the loins, in the region of the heart, and in the arm-pits. A robust man, wounded by a sting-ray, died in Demarara under the most dreadful convulsions.
The rays are very voracious; their food consists of any sort of fish, mollusc, annelide, or crustacean, that they can catch. So powerful are their muscles and jaws that they are able to crush the strong shell of a crab with the greatest ease. Even in our seas they attain a considerable size. Thomas Willoughby makes mention of a single skate of two hundred pounds' weight, which was sold in the fish market at Cambridge to the cook of St. John's College, and was found sufficient for the dinner of a society, consisting of more than a hundred and twenty persons. Dr. G. Johnston measured a sharp-nosed ray at Berwick, which was seven feet nine inches long and eight feet three inches broad. But our European rays are far from equalling the colossal dimensions of the sea-devil of the Pacific. This terrific monster swims fast, and often appears on the surface of the ocean, where its black unwieldy back looks like a huge stone projecting above the waters. It attains a breadth of twelve or fifteen feet, and Lesson was presented by a fisherman of Borabora with a tail five feet long. The Society Islanders catch the hideous animal with harpoons, and make use of its rough skin as rasps or files in the manufacture of their wooden utensils.
Creatures so voracious and well armed as the rays would have attained a dangerous supremacy in the maritime domains had they equalled most other fishes in fecundity. Fortunately for their neighbours, they seldom produce more than one young at a time, which, as in the sharks, is enclosed in a four-cornered capsule ending in slender points, but not, as in the former, produced into long filaments.
Thus nature has in this case set bounds to the increase of a race which else might have destroyed the balance of marine existence; in most fishes, however, she has been obliged to provide against the danger of extinction by a prodigal abundance of new germs. If the cod did not annually produce more than nine millions of eggs, and the sturgeon more than seven; if the flat-fish, mackerels, and herrings, did not multiply by hundreds of thousands, they could not possibly maintain themselves against the vast number of their enemies. "Not one egg too much," every one will say who considers that of all the myriads of germs which are deposited on the shallow sand-banks and shores to be quickened by the fructifying warmth of the sun, not one in a hundred comes to life, as fishes and molluscs, crabs and radiata, devour the spawn with equal voracity; that a thousand dangers await the young defenceless fry, since everywhere in the oceanic realms no other right is known than that of the stronger; and that, finally, the insatiable rapacity of man is continually extirpating millions on millions of the full-grown fishes. But if very few of this much-persecuted race die a natural death, a life of liberty makes them some amends for their violent end. The tortured cart-horse or the imprisoned nightingale would, if they could reflect, willingly exchange their hard lot and joyless existence for the free life of the independent fish, who, from the greater simplicity of his structure, his want of higher sensibilities, his excellent digestion, and the more equal temperature of the element in which he lives, remains unmolested by many of the diseases to which the warm-blooded and particularly the domestic animals are subject.