libut and pulled him into the dory, though it nearly swamped them, for
the fish weighed over three hundred and fifty pounds. It's rather a
queer story, I think, but it is reported as official."

Colin whistled.

"My word!" he said. "It must have been a big one, because a halibut is
flat, like a flounder, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's the largest of the flatfish. There's a record of one halibut
having been caught weighing a trifle over five hundred pounds. Usually a
fish one-fifth of that size is considered large."

"Flatfish are funny creatures," said Colin. "I've often wondered how the
eyes in various species wander around in their heads."

"Other people have wondered, too," said his companion.

"Well, but we know something about it, don't we?" protested the lad.
"Aren't the eyes all right in the young fish?"

"Certainly," was the reply, "and, what's more, the young fish swims
upright."

"How does the eye move round, then? Does the eye on one side go blind
and another one grow on?"

"No," answered his friend; "your first idea was the right one, the eye
moves round. But, as a matter of fact, it goes through the body. The
young flatfish is thin and almost transparent, and when it begins to be
time for the eye to change from one side of the body to the other it
sinks in. A thin, transparent skin grows over the socket and the eye
sinks in and in, the bones moving away from before it, until it has come
near the proper place on the other side. Then a new socket opens for the
eye, and it finally arrives at the end of its journey through the head,
thus coming on the same side as the other eye. At the same time, too,
the flatfish gets the habit of swimming on its side, and its color
scheme changes, one side--which has become the bottom--being white,
while the upper side is dark and spotted to look like the stones on the
bottom of the sea."

"What do flatfish eat?"

"Everything," was the reply, "from a clam to a codfish. But the favorite
food of the halibut, for instance, is sting-ray, and consequently it is
a good friend of the oysterman; where there is plenty of halibut, there
will be few sting-rays, and these last are destructive to a good
oyster-bed."

"It seems to me," said Colin, "that the whole story of the seas is that
fish eat fish, while the few that escape from their own kind are gobbled
up by seagulls and terns and other birds."

"Yet," said the other, smiling, "the birds don't have it all their own
way. So