Three-fourths of his flattened body is made up of head, mostly mouth, armed with hooks and curved knives.

Guided by his yellowish eyes fixed on top, he waves his pointed little beard, cut like leaves, and a pair of dorsal appendages like feathers.

This false bait attracts the unwary ones and soon the cavernous mandibles close upon them.
The plane fishes swim quickly over these monsters of the mire, that are always horizontally flat resting upon their bellies, whilst the flatness of the soles and others of the same species is vertical.

The two sides of the bodies of the soles, compressed laterally, have different colorings.

In this way, when lying down, they are able to merge themselves at the same time with the light of the surface and the shadow of the bottom, thus getting rid of their persecutors.
All the infinite varieties of the Mediterranean fauna were moving in the other tanks.
There passed by the greenish plates of glass the giltheads, the cackerels, and the sea roaches, clad in vivid silver with bands of gold on their sides.