A Year at the Shore

by Philip Henry Gosse

In a former work[99] I have narrated the untimely fate of one of these pretty fishes in my possession, through the poison-darts of a Parasitic Anemone.[100] A similar accident befell one lately, which I had kept in my tank for about two months. This individual, about two and a half inches long, active and healthy, made a backward spring, and came in contact with the tentacles of an Anthea cereus, which in an instant enveloped its hinder half, clinging round and over it and quite covering that portion. I was looking on, and after a moment’s glance to see that the fish was perfectly helpless, I removed it with a stick, so that it was free in about half a minute from its accident. But the effect was manifest; it swam away indeed, but irregularly and fitfully, and presently sank down on the bottom; lay awhile, then struggled up for a few seconds, swimming on one side, as if partly paralysed, and frequently turning over belly-up; then sinking obliquely down and hiding its nose between the stones. The fins were white and ragged, and the skin of the hinder part was ruffled up in parts, and the entire hind-half looked diseased. By night it was not to be seen; but the next morning I found it, dead and stiff, and with the whole of the parts that had been embraced by the Anthea turned of a pellucid white, the edges of the fins sloughed away and decomposing.

When we consider that the entire period of contact was no more than half a minute, the power of the subtle poison, injected by the cnidæ of the Opelet, becomes very manifest; and the accident afforded me another confirmation of what has been fondly denied, the amazing energy of the poison-apparatus in the Actinozoa.

LUCKY PROACH.

An assiduous searching of these hanging fringes of fuci will be sure to yield a pleasing return of other objects. Neglecting at this moment the Prawns, Æsops, Opossum-shrimps, Spider-crabs, and many other crustacea, not to speak of other classes, let us direct our thoughts exclusively to the fishes. You will get probably one or two specimens of that little bull-headed rogue, the Father-lasher,[101] armed at all points, like a knight in the fair time of chivalry. An impudent little rascal he looks, and right villanous; but whether he is in truth guilty of whipping his paternal parent, this deponent saith not. Big-headed, wide-mouthed, staring-eyed, beset on all sides with hard spines as sharp as needles, which he erects with threatening fierceness as he anticipates your touch, this Lucky Proach, as our northern friends name him, may not invite a close acquaintance; and indeed our fishermen generally jerk him energetically out of the net as soon as they see him, thinking themselves “lucky” to be well quit of his prickles.

Plate 23.
P. H. GOSSE, del. LEIGHTON, BROS.
FATHER-LASHER. WORM-PIPEFISH.

ITS HABITS.

Yet in truth he makes a funny little tenant of the aquarium. His colours are agreeable; deep rich brown on the upper parts, fantastically patched and clouded with various shades from black to pure white, while the sides and belly are brilliantly silvery or opalescent. His countenance expresses considerable intelligence; and the contrast between his aspect when he is alarmed, and all his spines are laid flat, and when he thinks to carry his point by bullying, and bristles up all his sharp lances, and glares with a threatening goggle, is very amusing. He presently becomes at home; for a day or two he skulks under the rocky ledges, and you see little of him; but soon his characteristic impudence reassures him, and vires acquirit eundo; he makes short hasty sallies into the open, and instantly scuttles back to his retreat; presently you see his great head projecting out of some crevice in the rocks, whence he can command a pretty extensive view; and now that is his selected home, and there henceforward you may pretty surely find him, whenever he is not to be seen engaged in predatory forays in some other quarter of the tank. Now he grows very saucy; not a Blenny or Goby or Pipe can come before his castle-gate but Proach must dash out to have a passage-of-arms with him, returning, in all the pride of conquest, when he has driven the routed foe out of sight, to his rocky fortress, and settling himself in the same watchful attitude as before. Every atom of meat that you drop into the water within his range of vision must be his: you perhaps intended the morsel for the Goby or the Blenny, but Proach sees it, and Proach must have it. They indeed may sail up towards the speck, but Proach dashes up, bristling with indignation at their temerity, and snaps the food from before their very noses. Not one of them can get a bit till Proach is satiated; and I have often seen him lie with a morsel projecting from his mouth for some time, absolutely incapable of swallowing more, before he would relinquish the contest. Now he fears nothing; he will even rush to the surface when he sees you approaching, and, with a sudden snap, seize the meat in your fingers, and drag it away.