They are entertaining inmates of an aquarium; they play slowly up
and down in the corners of the tank, exploring every angle and
cranny, hanging in every possible attitude, especially at night.
They soon become familiar, and may be preserved in health a long
time. They are constantly occupied in searching for, and picking off
atoms, invisible to us, with their protrusile lips. These organs are
remarkably large, thick, and fleshy, whence has been derived the name
of the family, _Labridæ_ (from _labrum_, a lip); and, in death, they
are generally projected in an uncouth and repulsive form. It is a
pity that Yarrell’s figures have been for the most part copied from
specimens in this distorted condition, and are therefore hideous
caricatures of the little beauties. His Corkwing is a notable example,
presenting but little resemblance to the playful emerald in my tank;
while the Gilthead and the Sea-wife are still more horrible. It is
matter of regret that so large a portion of our pictorial natural
history represents death rather than life; while a herd of slavish
compilers, who have never seen the creatures on which they obtrude
their teachings, copy such imperfect figures, and copy each other, and
go on augmenting the distortions, and straying farther and farther from
nature, till all _vraisemblance_ is lost in the ludicrous caricature.
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.