Opostomias micripnus
In Opostomias micripnus, a dark black fish living at a depth of over 2,000 fathoms, there are two rows of ocellar organs running down the sides of the body from the head to the tail. In the living animal they are said to shine with a reddish lustre. In addition to these, the conspicuous organs, there are `groups` of fifty, a hundred, or even more very much smaller organs situated on the sides and back of the fish, each of which is lenticular in shape and consists of a number of short polygonal tubes containing a granular substance with rounded bases resting on the subjacent tissue. The whole organ is covered 79by a simple continuation of the cuticle of the body-wall. The granular substance contained in the tubes is most probably the seat of luminosity.
The Aspredo Cat fish
In one of the 'cat-fishes'—the Aspredo—the mother carries the eggs about with her, and this is managed in a very remarkable way. Just at the time she lays her eggs, the skin of the under surface of her body becomes swollen and spongy, and into this she presses her eggs by lying on them. Here, snugly sheltered, they remain till hatched!
Paradise fish
Thus, certain fishes related to the wonderful Anabas—the perch that climbs trees!—make nests of bubbles, in which the eggs are placed! The Gorami and the beautiful little 'paradise-fish', for example, built floating nurseries of this kind, the bubble-raft being made by the male. In the case of the paradise-fish these bubbles are blown so that the enclosed eggs are raised above the level of the water, where they remain till hatched! This raft, although it has been seen many times by travellers, is so frail that it cannot be preserved, and has never yet been drawn by an artist, so that we can only show the fish that makes it.
Three Spined Stickleback
The male stickleback, as many of you may know, builds a wonderful nest, in which, when finished, he invites his chosen mate to lay her eggs. As soon as these precious treasures have been entrusted to his care, he makes himself their sole guardian, forcing currents of fresh water through the nest by the violent fanning motion of his breast-fins, and driving away all that come near. Strangely enough, he has to exercise the greatest care to keep out his mate, who would eat every single egg if she could but get the chance!
Butter fish
In the 'butter-fishes' or 'gunnels' which are found round our coasts, the eggs are rolled into a ball, and jealously nursed by the parents, each in turn coiling its body round the mass, and so protecting it from injury
Cephalaspis and Loricaria, an Ancient and a Modern Armored Fish
Still higher up we come upon the abundant remains of numerous small fish-like animals, more or less completely clad in bony armor, indicating that they lived in troublous times when there was literally a fight for existence and only such as were well armed or well protected could hope to survive. A parallel case exists to-day in some of the rivers of South America, where the little cat-fishes would possibly be eaten out of existence but for the fact that they are covered—some of them very completely—with plate-armor that enables them to defy their enemies, or renders them such poor eating as not to be worth the taking. The arrangement of the plates or scales in the living Loricaria is very suggestive of the series of bony rings covering the body of the ancient Cephalaspis, only the latter, so far as we know, had no side-fins; but the creatures are in no wise related, and the similarity is in appearance only.
Pterichthys, the Wing Fish
erichthys, the wing fish, was another small, quaint, armor-clad creature, whose fossilized remains were taken for those of a crab, and once described as belonging to a beetle. Certainly the buckler of this fish, which is the part most often preserved, with its jointed, bony arms, looks to the untrained eye far more like some strange crustacean than a fish, and even naturalists have pictured the animal as crawling over the bare sands by means of those same arms. These fishes and their allies were once the dominant type of life, and must have abounded in favored localities, for in places are great deposits of their protective shields jumbled together in a confused mass, and, save that they have hardened into stone, lying just as they were washed up on the ancient beach ages ago. How abundant they were may be gathered from the fact that it is believed their bodies helped consolidate portions of the strata of the English Old Red Sandstone.
Pike
Pike
Nest Building Fish
The young of the common Eel and its metamorphosis
Drawings by Professor Grassi, of Rome, of the young of the common Eel and its metamorphosis. All of the natural size. The uppermost figure represents a transparent glass-like creature—which was known as a rare “find” to marine naturalists, and received the name Leptocephalus. Really it lives in vast numbers in great depths of the sea—five hundred fathoms and more. It is hatched here from the eggs of the common Eel which descends from the ponds, lakes, and rivers of Europe in order to breed in these great depths. The gradual change of the Leptocephalus into a young Eel or “Elver” is shown, and was discovered by Grassi. The young Eels leave the great depth of the ocean and ascend the rivers in immense shoals of many hundred thousand individuals, and wriggle their way up banks and rocks into the small streams and pools of the continent.
The oldest fossil fish known—discovered in the Upper Silurian strata of Scotland, and named Birkenia by Professor Traquair
The oldest fossil fish known—discovered in the Upper Silurian strata of Scotland, and named Birkenia by Professor Traquair.
Paintings of fish on plates
Crenilabrus mediterraneus. Uranoscopus scaber? In Attica, too, was early developed a characteristic and closely accurate type of representation of marine forms, and this attained a wider vogue in Southern Italy in the fourth century. From the latter period a number of dishes and vases have come down to us bearing a large variety of fish forms, portrayed with an exactness that is interesting in view of the attention to marine creatures in the surviving literature of Aristotelian origin
Rainbow Darter
Long-eared Sunfish
Trout
Trout
Female Stickleback Laying Eggs in Nest
Female Stickleback Laying Eggs in Nest
Male Stickleback Watching Eggs in Nest
Male Stickleback Watching Eggs in Nest
Female Stickleback about to Enter Nest
Female Stickleback about to Enter Nest
The wonderful draught of fishes
" And they let down the net into the sea, but it enclosed so great a multitude of fishes that they could not draw them up; and the net brake. Then Simon beckoned to his partners, James and John, who were in the other boat, that they should come and help them. And they came and filled both boats with the fishes, so that they began to sink.
Boys’ Festival, Japan
The fifth day of the fifth month is the Boys’ Festival. Then they are selling bows and arrows and other toy weapons everywhere. Everywhere they hang out great paper fishes, shaped like carp, and brightly painted. These are hung to tall bamboo poles of which there is one set in front of every house where they have a boy in the family. One fish is hung for each boy, and it is a gay sight to see the hundreds of bright fish waving and tossing in the wind. The reason 92why the carp is represented is because it swims up the river against the current; so it is hoped “the sturdy boy, overcoming all obstacles, will make his way in the world and rise to fame and fortune.”
A self-sustaining or balanced aquarium
three children looking at an aquarium Any transparent vessel capable of holding water, even a Mason jar will make an aquarium from which a great deal of pleasure may be derived. The old way of maintaining aquaria in good condition required a great deal of care and attention. The water had to be changed at least once a day if running water was not available, and altogether they were so much trouble that as a rule owners soon tired of them. Modern aquaria are totally different. By a proper combination of fish and growing plants we can almost duplicate the conditions of nature and strike a balance so that the water need never be changed except when it becomes foul or to clean the glass.
The walking-fish or mud-skipper (Periophthalmus)
It skips about by means of its strong pectoral fins on the mud-flats; it jumps from stone to stone hunting small shore-animals; it climbs up the roots of the mangrove-trees. The close-set eyes protrude greatly and are very mobile. The tail seems to help in respiration.
Early Life-History of the Salmon
1. The fertilised egg, shed in the gravelly bed of the river. 2. The embryo within the egg, just before hatching. The embryo has been constricted off from the yolk-laden portion of the egg. 3. The newly hatched salmon, or alevin, encumbered with its legacy of yolk (Y.S.). 4 and 5. The larval salmon, still being nourished from the yolk-sac (Y.S.), which is diminishing in size as the fish grows larger. 6. The salmon fry about six weeks old, with the yolk fully absorbed, so that the young fish has now to feed for itself. The fry become parr, which go to the sea as smolts, and return as grilse. In all cases the small figures to the right indicate the natural size.
Australian Lung Fish
Fishes
Fishes. Black and White ware. 11 by 4½ inches. The most problematical of all the life figures on the Mimbres pottery is shown. This figure occurs on a black and white food bowl, eleven inches in diameter, four and one-half inches in depth. In support of the theory that the two figures here depicted represent fishes, we have the pointed head without neck, the operculum as a white crescentic design, two fins (pectoral, ventral, and anal), the median (adipose?) dorsal fin unpaired, and a long tail bifurcated at the extremity. The resemblance of these figures to the undoubted fishes on bowls previously mentioned is conclusive evidence that they represent the same animal.
Fish
Fish. Oldtown Ruin. Diam. 9″ One of the bowls from the Oldtown ruin has two fishes depicted on opposite sides of the inner surface. These fishes resemble trout and are of different colors, black and reddish brown figures painted on a white ground. They are represented as hanging from two parallel lines surrounding the rim of the bowl. These fishes are so well drawn that there is no doubt what animal was intended to be here represented.
Other Pets
A cat looking at fish in a fishbowl
Stomias Boa. From a depth of 1,900 metres