Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1893 — THIS QUEER FLOUNDER. [ARTICLE]

THIS QUEER FLOUNDER.

Dow His Under Eye Works its Way to His Hack. Some of you may have heard the saying “as flat as a flounder," and have not stopped to think. What I wish to tell you ia why this fish is flat, and what happens because it is flat. If you have ever seen one in market or elsewhere, you know that the upper and under parts of its body are of different colors, and its two eyes are, strangely enough, both on the same side of the head. If you were to see one in the water, you would notice that it swam not upright, as other fish swim, lying over on one side, with its eyes on top. Now all these things—the flatness, the two eyes together, toe twisted mouth, the differently colored sides, the peculiar swimming—come from the fact that the flounder ’a not and never has been an over-brave fish. We cannot blame the poor creatures much, because tney have: no way to defend themselves, as swordfish and some others have. Their neighbors enjoyed eating them; they know that they are weak, and so they took, ages ago, to hiding at the bottom of the water. This has been done so long, that now they have actually lost the power to come to the surface. Other fish rise and sink by means of an air-bladder. Those of our friends that used theirs and rose were pounced upon and eaten. The poor scared ones that hid at the bottom and saved their lives had no need of the rising apparatus, and now, as is always the case when an organ is not used they have lost it.

But when the flounder took to his hiding place at the bottom, he did not settle himself at all comfortably, according to our ideas of fish cbmfort. Instead of an. upright position, with the two sides equally up, he chose, for some reason, to lie over entirely on one of them, with the other side up. 1 This position accounts for the differently colored sides. That on which he lay was protected always from the sunlight, and lost its color. The upper has come to be the color of the bottom on which he lives, be that color what it may. That it should be so is not so strange as it seems. A bright flounder shining on a dark bottom is easily seen by its enemies, and seized and eaten. The same would be true of a dark fish in a bright coral home. Those who lived to have families of their own were those whose color was most like the oolor of their home. Only the safest oolor was transmitted, and so, the world over, members of this family are tho color of sand, or mud, or gravel, or shell, or coral, according to the place of their abode. Bome are even knotted and rough, in a way that makes them wonderfully like their home. We find, for the same reason, arctic animals white like snow, and desert insects the color of sand.

Another result of the flatness of this flat fish family to which the flounder belongs is that its eyes are both on the top of its head. We can best see how they have gotten together, and how other changes have taken place, by noticing the growth of a young flounder. In the very beginning of its existence the baby fish is a clear, transparent little thing. Its two eyes, are where wellregulated eyes should be, on opposite sides of the head, and it swims vertically in the water, as do other fish. But in a few days the influence of a long line of flounder ancestry is felt. He, too, takes to lying on one side—generally, but not always, the left. Tho exposed skin darkens. In this position the view of the under eye is somewhat limited, and it squints upward toward a larger one. It begins to move; it turns the corner and comes to the top. There it takes a stand. The mouth twists upward, and the young fish swims along sidewise on the bottom. —[Harper’s Young People.