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There were cod, keeling, whiting, flounders, plaice, dabs, and other sorts of common fish of a dingy grey with whitish splotches; there were conger-eels, huge serpent-like creatures, with small black eyes and muddy, bluish skins, so slimy that they still seemed to be gliding along, yet alive.
The Psammead was put into a flat bass-bag that had come from Farringdon Market with two pounds of filleted plaice in it. Now it contained about three pounds and a quarter of solid Psammead, and the children took it in turns to carry it. 'It's not half the weight of The Lamb, Robert said, and the girls sighed.
We are intended to rise at times and breathe the atmosphere above us, and then to descend again to the lower region. It is only the dab and the common plaice that are content to lie ever on the bottom, and they are but one-sided fish. They see with one eye only, the other has been absorbed and become dead. Every creature has in it a promise of something better than what it is.
The Clown emerged running with a stolen plaice, passed it into the hands of the Pantaloon, who followed, and was in turn pursued off the scene by the Constables: but the fishmonger, issuing last in chase, ran into the Clown, who caught up a barrel of red herrings and bonneted him.
The eye on the under side of the body would thus be useless, but a glance at a sole or plaice in a fishmonger's shop will show that this eye has worked upward to the top of the head. Was the eye shifted by the effort and straining of the fish, inherited and increased slightly in each generation?
Anyway, it did not sell, coming back every time with sickening regularity. Despite his protests, Lalage always insisted on sitting up for him. "You must have something hot when you come in," she declared, "even if we can only run to a cup of cocoa and a little bit of plaice from the fried fish shop. You can't do brain work on nothing." Jimmy gladly left all the finances to her.
For about a month this small, transparent youngster hardly alters. Then it grows deeper in the body, and begins to swim near the bottom of the sea. At last it lies on one side, and its life as a "round" fish is over. A fish lying thus on its side would have one eye buried in the sand, and quite useless, would it not? But our young Plaice is changing its appearance very quickly.
There is one point in which this sexual dimorphism in the Plaice appears to differ from typical cases, and which suggests that the greater spinulation of scales in the males has no function at all in the relations of the sexes, and is therefore not subject to and external stimulation.
Have you ever watched those little sailing-vessels which go a-shrimping? They carry a large net a shrimp-trawl, it is called which is drawn over the sandy home of the Shrimp. When the trawl is hauled up it may contain not only Shrimps, but the other dwellers in sandy places. Among these, sad to say, is often a mass of baby Plaice and other flat fish.
Indeed, there are secrets in the life of this fish, and many other fish too, which still puzzle us. Put a Salmon and a Plaice side by side, and it is plain that they live in very different ways. One is made to dart like an arrow, the other to lie flat. One is the shape of a torpedo, the other is flat like a raft.
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