. The fishes of the east Atlantic coast, that are caught with hook and line. er fish, but itsbroad back will bear all this abuse, and it will continue to emergetriumphant from the frying pan with its tail turned up in a disdain-ful twist. The flounder has one virtue not possessed by its prouder relations ;he is always ready to be caught. Just as soon as it gets mild enouo-hfor the hardiest fisherman, he has but to drop his hook over a ^oHmud-bank, and when he raises his line, lo ! there is a flounder at theother end. And again, when the flounder makes up his deliberatemind to bite he does so i
. The fishes of the east Atlantic coast, that are caught with hook and line. er fish, but itsbroad back will bear all this abuse, and it will continue to emergetriumphant from the frying pan with its tail turned up in a disdain-ful twist. The flounder has one virtue not possessed by its prouder relations ;he is always ready to be caught. Just as soon as it gets mild enouo-hfor the hardiest fisherman, he has but to drop his hook over a ^oHmud-bank, and when he raises his line, lo ! there is a flounder at theother end. And again, when the flounder makes up his deliberatemind to bite he does so in a thorough manner, and when the anglerpulls him out the flounder has by some peculiar internal mechanismworked the hook almost down to his tail (swallowed the hook, as theboys say), thus saving the fisherman that great vexation of spiritconsequent on losing a noble fish. Before this is in type every reader of The Angler will have seena faithful likeness of the flounder, so it is unnecessary for me to de-scribe his shape. In color he varies, from an instance of one white. FISHES OF TUE E.\ST ATLANTIC COAST. 57 on both sides (one side is always white), through all shades of mot-tled brown. The big fellows (known to many local fishermen as tide runners)are a deep, rich brown or black—frequently, like the blackfish, markedwith spots of gray. Often the color changes after they are young ones and the smaller kinds are lighter in tint, when verysmall being translucent. I dont mean to say you could read a news-paper through them, but holding them up to the light you can seethe arrangement of the bones and fins. It is a curious physical fact that the young of the fiounder, thefry, when first hatched are shaped like other fish, with an eye oneach side of the head, but through a process of adaptation, as thefish matures the eye, strangely enough, slips around the head, andtakes up its station permanently near the other. I have never seenthis done, but it is a fact. The flou
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