Identifier: shellssealife00keep (find matches)
Title: Shells and sea-life
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Keep, Josiah
Subjects: Shells Shells Mollusks
Publisher: San Francisco : The Whitaker and Ray company (incorporated)
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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. Therewere sea-anemones blossomed out like greatflowers; huge abalones resting on the rocks, theirgreat shells raised slightly to let the water circu-late freely; starfishes of various colors, yellow,red, and purple; and then true fishes, swimmingabout so gracefully, and seeming to take no notice ISO WESTERN SERIES OF READERS. of the boat that was sailing right over their heads,or, more properly, over their backs. One of these fishes had rings of black runningaround his light-colored body, making him looklike a prisoner in San Quentin. He is very prop-erly called the convict-fish. He grows to beabout eight or ten inches long, has a sharp noselike a pig, and always seems to be near the bottom,searching for food among the rocks. They sayhe is seldom caught with a hook. Sometimes quite a large fish would swim rightunder our boat, and again we would see a wholeschool of sea-minnows, or shiners, darting away invarious directions, and then coming togetheragain, like bees in a flying swarm.
Text Appearing After Image:
Figure «6. A WATER-TELESCOPE. 181 We kept near the shore, as the life is moreabundant there, and besides, when the water istoo deep, it is hard to see what is going on be-neath you. But when we saw the fishing-boatscome in with their loads of beautiful silver-sidedsalmon, we wished that we might have had atelescope that would have shown us the wondersof the deeper sea. When we stand on the beach and look out overthe waves, we can imagine some of the wonderfulthings that are going on beneath them, but wecannot really see the great fishes darting here andthere in pursuit of their prey, nor observe thebroad pearl-oysters resting on the bottom, norwatch the hundreds of beautiful creatures thathave their home far away from mans sight. And yet we know that they are there, forsometimes the boats let down hooks and dredgesand bring us up a few specimens. And so we

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