nd snapping
viciously. As these fellows were 10 ft. long, the men told off to the
duty had to proceed warily, and after an hour's exciting sport
succeeded in lassoing them one after the other round the neck, yanking
them ashore, and bustling them into wooden cases made expressly for
their accommodation. They were at once taken to the warm interior of
the horticultural building, and I saw them spending their Sabbath in
some degree of comfort in the tepid water of the basin, without even
guessing that in the old country it was Shakespeare's day.

Some of the queer fish swimming about in the big aquarium tanks
naturally drew my attention. Carriers from Florida and elsewhere were
arriving every day with new specimens, and I could see, in a quarter of
an hour's stroll round the circular annexe, more live fish than I had
ever seen in three of the largest aquariums known in England, had they
been combined into one. There were some large fellows, something like
pollack, cruising around, and these are called buffaloes. Insinuating
their slow course through the crowd were fresh-water gar-fish with long
spike noses. The catfish, with its greasy chubby body, portmanteau
mouth, and prominent wattles, were precisely like those we used to
catch (and eat sometimes) in Australia. Carp were present in numbers,
including the mirror and leather varieties, but carp culture was not so
fashionable as it was in the States. My eyes were gladdened with a
grand lot of tench, in the primest colouring of bright bronze; they
were raised from some of our British Stock. A whole tank was filled
with two-year-old fontinalis; another with young lake trout, handsome
12-in. examples at two years old, and not easy at a glance to
distinguish from fontinalis. Then came a tank of young sturgeon; and,
in a general assembly next door, were a few wall-eyed pike; this is
really a pike-perch, differing in the markings, however, from the
zander of Central Europe.

A most droll-looking customer is the paddle fish. With body suggesting
a compromise between sturgeon and catfish, he has a long, perfectly
straight duck bill, and so seems to be always shoving ahead of him a
good broad paper knife nine or ten inches long. This weapon is used
for digging up the bed of the river, but if it could be insinuated out
of the water into a drowsy angler's leg it would probably make him sit
up. As the paddle is as long as the fish the creature presents a
really farcic