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As for the first subgenus, it furnished several specimens of that bizarre fish aptly nicknamed "toadfish," whose big head is sometimes gouged with deep cavities, sometimes swollen with protuberances; bristling with stings and strewn with nodules, it sports hideously irregular horns; its body and tail are adorned with callosities; its stings can inflict dangerous injuries; it's repulsive and horrible.
George's dragon as possibly can be, except his legs and wings; and the toadfish which will swell till it be like to burst when it comes into the air. When Smith spoke of sturgeon he was most probably referring to the James river, the best waters for sturgeon in Virginia to this day. The "small rivers" were the fresh-water tributaries of the large salty ones.
Among bony fish, I noted grizzled wrasse unique to these seas, deep-water gilthead whose iris has a fiery gleam, one-meter croakers whose large mouths bristle with small teeth and which let out thin cries, black rudderfish like those I've already discussed, blue dorados accented with gold and silver, rainbow-hued parrotfish that can rival the loveliest tropical birds in coloring, banded blennies with triangular heads, bluish flounder without scales, toadfish covered with a crosswise yellow band in the shape of a Greek t, swarms of little freckled gobies stippled with brown spots, lungfish with silver heads and yellow tails, various specimens of salmon, mullet with slim figures and a softly glowing radiance that Lacépède dedicated to the memory of his wife, and finally the American cavalla, a handsome fish decorated by every honorary order, bedizened with their every ribbon, frequenting the shores of this great nation where ribbons and orders are held in such low esteem.
Those which I remember to have seen there of the kinds that are not eaten are the whale, porpoise, shark, dogfish, gar, stingray, thornback, sawfish, toadfish, frogfish, land crabs, fiddlers, and periwinkle.
"Now, if they'd said bull-terriers," he said, "I might have had my doubts, but a bulldog's no more dangerous than a toadfish. He's like my old grandma. What teeth he has don't meet. And besides," he said, "there weren't any bulldogs on that farm. And I don't believe there ever were. Now, I'm not sure, sonny," he said, "but you climb up here "
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