A Year at the Shore

by Philip Henry Gosse

This is oracular; but it does not appear that the decision of the great French anatomist was grounded on any definite experiments. Mr. Couch, on the other hand, has known three men wounded successively in the hand by the same fish (the Greater Weever), and the consequences have been felt in a few minutes as high as the shoulder. It is certain that the spinous bristles of certain caterpillars have the power of inflicting envenomed wounds, which in some cases even prove fatal, notwithstanding the minuteness of the organs, and evidence appears very strong for the injection of some highly irritant poison by means of these prickles of the Weevers.

The flesh of these fishes is esteemed for the table; but such is the general apprehension of danger attendant upon touching them, heightened also by their great tenacity of life, that the fishermen usually cut off the first dorsal and the gill-spines as soon as they capture them; while in Spain and France these precautions are enforced by legal penalties, on such fishes being exposed in the market without having been disarmed.[59]

According to Mr. Couch smart friction of the wounded part with olive-oil is the most effectual remedy; and this fact again suggests analogy of the evil with the effects produced by the bites of venomous snakes and the stings of insects.[60]

Our little fish is not uncomely in its form or the distribution of its sober colours. The upper parts are light olive, with lines of ill-defined reddish spots running lengthwise; the sides are silver-grey, tenderly washed with blue; the under parts pearly white: the cheeks and operculum are richly adorned with pearly reflections; these parts are destitute of scales, which is the chief distinction between this species and the Greater Weever, after the size; this species rarely exceeding five or six inches in length, whereas its congener attains double those dimensions, and even more.

ITS HABITS.

In the tank, it is not particularly interesting; it grovels on the bottom among the pebbles, and will cover its body with the sediment so far as it is able; where it lies for hours, watching upward. Doubtless this is its habitual mode of obtaining its food; lying motionless in wait, nearly concealed, the eyes and the mouth both opening upwards, so that the former can observe, and the latter seize, any vagrant crustacean, or annelid, or young fish-fry that unsuspectingly swims within reach. Its motions when its energies are aroused are rapid, sudden, and forcible; and it probably rarely misses its victim when it makes its snap; while the multitude of minute creatures that roam continually over every part of the sea-bottom give no lack of opportunities for the exercise of its instincts. He fares sumptuously, no doubt.

Here is in the drag a specimen of an interesting tribe of fishes. It is the young of the common Thornback, a little thing about five inches in width, and in its infantile grace and beauty much more attractive than the older ones we are accustomed to see on the fishmonger’s table. It flaps and flutters in impatience at being dragged out of its element, and exposed to ungenial air: we will quiet its anxiety by lifting it into yonder shallow rock-pool. Now watch it. How easily and gracefully it glides around its new abode, moving along by an undulation of the edges of the broad pectoral fins, a movement which Yarrell describes as something between flying and swimming. Now it lies still on the sand-floor of the pool, motionless, save that the two oval orifices just behind the eyes are constantly opening and closing, by the drawing across each or back, of a film which exactly resembles an eyelid, and which on examination with a lens we see to be edged with a delicate fringe. The action is so closely like the winking of an eye, that an observer seeing the fish for the first time might readily suppose the orifices to be the organs of vision. They are, however, outlets of the gills, called spiracles; the ordinary gill-apertures are five on each side, placed semi-circularly on the inferior surface of the body, as you see when I turn the fish on its back, a demonstration which it resents and resists with all its might: these upper orifices communicate with the gill-chambers by canals, and you may see the water now and then strongly driven out of them.

YOUNG SKATE.

The eyes are these knobs just in front of the spiracles; or rather these are the orbits, the pupil looking sideways and somewhat downward. If you use the lens again, you perceive that there is a singular protection to the pupil in the form of a fan-like array of about a dozen stiff points arching over it.