The cod here seemed quite as much interested in looking at us through a
glass window as we were in looking at them. They are tame, and have
very large appetites--so tame, and so hungry, that the fish who live
with them are at a disadvantage at meal-times, and it is feared that
they must be removed.
These other fish are plaice, soles, brill, turbot, and skate. The skate
love to lie buried over head and ears in the sand. The faintest outline
of tail or a flapping fin betrays the spot, and you long for an
umbrella-poke from some Zoological-Garden-frequenting old lady, to stir
the lazy creature up; but it is impossible.
Suddenly, when you are as tired of waiting as Jack was when Coomara was
"engaged thinking," the fin movement becomes more distinct, a cloud of
sand rises into the water, and a grey-coated skate, with two ornamental
knobs upon his tail, flaps slowly away across the pool.
Sometimes these flat-fish flap upwards to the surface, poke their noses
into the other world, and then, like larks, having gone up with effort,
let themselves easily down again to the ground.
As we were looking into No. 7, an ambitious little sole took into his
head to climb up the rocks, in the caves of which dwell crusty crabs.
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