Castletowers herself might have done. But the
Countess passed her as if she had not spoken, and
swept down the little avenue of cypresses, without
taking any further notice of her presence.

Miss Rivière continued to stand in the same
proud attitude till the last gleam of her
ladyship's silken skirts had disappeared among the
trees. And then her strength suddenly gave
way, and she sat down again upon the gloomy
threshold, and sobbed as if her heart were
breaking.

OCEAN SWELLS.

IF the quiet steady-going fishes of our coasts
and rivers could see some of their brethren
and relatives in the Eastern seas, they would be
a little astonished, always supposing they are
capable—as I maintain they are—of such a
sensation. English fish—a few dandies, such as the
gold and silver carp excepted, and they really
belong to China—are attired in sober colours,
like well-dressed English folks; but these "swells
of the ocean" blaze out in all the hues of the rainbow
and in divers others; orange and red; yellow
and black; green and lake; blue, purple, pink,
and yellow. Bright sea-green and yellow are
perpetually seen in the same vestment, and one
very heavy swell may now and then be beheld in
yellow, blue, red, green, black, and grey. The
dorsal fin is often marked with as many as four
colours, and to heighten the effect of all this
splendour, the hues are generally of the most
brilliant character. Nor are these the exceptions.
Our fish now and then offer a few
eccentricities of shape and colour. Anglers who go
hauling up great congers off the Channel
Islands, and sharp-set young sharks in the
Irish Sea; enthusiastic naturalists prowling
about in bright summer mornings and golden
autumn days, dredging up irritable star-fish, who
commit suicide by explosion; such explorers
stealing into still lonely nooks, to peer under the
olive-brown sea-wrack for the spotted goby and
velvet fiddler, now and then see some strange
creature caught after a heavy storm in some far-
away spot; but in the Indian Archipelago all
seems wonderful together. So soon as a family
of fish gets into these enchanted waters it begins
to

                suffer a sea change
    Into some rich thing and strange.

Nor is it in colour alone, but in pattern also, that
they come out so strong. Instead of being content
with a sprinkling of bars and spots, like a little
well-appointed jewellery, they are crossed and
spotted, marbled and streaked, from head to
tail. Some, have patterns like flowers on their
armour; others, have chains of oval spots with
scrolls bordering them like an indented moulding;
and then come others with flourishes,
twists, and grotesque figures, for which it is not
easy to find suitable names.

A Dutch naturalist, Dr. Bleeker, a physician,
with something like twenty titles, is now publishing
a gallery of portraits of fish found in the
waters of the Indian Archipelago. The work is
an honour to the author and his country.

There was a fish called the scarus, for which
those gormandising old thieves, the wealthy
Romans, used to pay immense prices, and which
they transported with immense care from the
Ægean Sea to their fish-ponds and stews, there
to fatten for the dinner-table.

Dr. Bleeker paints for us scari that swarm
in the waters round Celebes, Java, and the
Molucca Islands. This fish, once so highly
prized, is considered by the Europeans in the
East so worthless that it is never seen on their
tables, being given up to the natives and the
Chinese, who will eat anything. One species
alone, the green pseudoscarus, now and then
appears in the bill of fare, but it is not thought
much of.

It would be too much of a good thing to
describe all the species of this family, for there are
scores of them. All that can be done is to single
out one or two, which, however, of course but
imperfectly represent so large a group. We will
select the pseudoscarus tricolor as a specimen.
In this beautiful fish the upper part of the head
and the back are deep blue, shading down into
black; the greater part of the side is of bright sky
blue, while the colour beneath is a pale Indian
red; the hind part and tail are of a rich rose
colour. The dorsal fin bears at its free edge a
stripe of blue, then comes a broad band of rose;
below this, is a narrow strip of blue, and again a
line of pale rose. The ventral fin is of rose
colour, inclining to yellow; the pectoral fin is
yellow and black. The eye is of a bright yellow,
and round the lips runs a delicate stripe of
red.

The dorsal fin is often very beautiful in the
scari. Nothing can exceed the tints of the pale
blue and rose bars, the yellow and rosy green,
the Indian red and port wine hue, the salmon
colour, the pink and lilac. Sometimes, the bars
are spotted with strongly-contrasted colours,
as, for instance, pink bars with blue or green
spots. The head is often beautifully marbled with
irregularly curved narrow bars of some colour,
as, for instance, damask, green, red, lilac, or
black, which is strongly relieved by the ground.
The tail is frequently streaked or barred with
blue, lake, and green, dark red, rose colour, and
yellow. The flower-like patterns on the scales
are very well marked in some scari, beginning
just below the root of the dorsal fin, and running
in a line from this spot towards the tail.

The most striking thing about these fish is
the strong resemblance of the head to that of a
parrot: owing to which, and the brilliancy of
their colouring, they have been generally called
"parrot fish." One member of the family
(the pseudoscarus microrrhinus) is so like the
parrot about the head, that at first sight it
looks as if the waters of the ocean were
displaying a paradox as strange in its way as the
rivers of Australia exhibit in the water-mole.
The great circular brown eye, the iris bordered
with yellow, the dark green cheek, and the