"Now, what I want to know," said Jack, "is what sort of fish this is, which side of him belongs on top, and what use he makes of this match-lighter."
"I'm afraid I can't help you much," said Ned. "A year ago I would have told you at once that the fish is a shark's pilot, so called because he follows ships as sharks do, and the sailors think he acts as a pilot for the sharks. But now I don't know what to call it."
"Why not?" asked Charley.
"Because I don't know. I've been reading up in the cyclopædias and natural histories and ichthyologies about our fishes down here, and have found out that whatever I know isn't so."
"Why, how's that?"
"Well, take the whiting, for example. When I began reading up to see if there was any sort of cousinship between him and the dolphin, I soon found that the whiting isn't a whiting at all, but I couldn't find out any thing else about him. The whiting described in the books is a sort of codfish's cousin, and he lives only at the North. Neither the pictures nor the descriptions of him at all resemble our whiting, so I don't know what sort of fish our whiting is. I only know that he isn't a whiting, and isn't the remotest relation to the dolphin, because he is a fish and has scales, while the dolphin is a cetacean."
"What's a cetacean?" asked Charley.