While these strange things were clearly observable under our electric light, I made Conseil acquainted with the history of the Atlantides; which, from a purely imaginative point of view, inspired Bailly with material for many charming pages. But Conseil appeared somewhat indifferent to my wish to discuss those questions respecting ancient Atlantis, and his indifference was soon explained.
So many fish passed before him, and when fish were in the way Conseil plunged into the depths of classification, and went out of the world altogether. In this case I could only yield, and study with him.
The fish in the Atlantic, as a rule, do not differ much from those we have already noticed. There were gigantic rays, various kinds of sharks, a glaucus about fifteen feet long, with sharp triangular teeth, brown sagre, humanteris, sturgeons, trumpet syngnathes, about a foot and a half long, without teeth or tongue, which swam like beautiful and lissome serpents.
Amongst the bony fishes, Conseil noted the black mokairas, nine feet long, and armed with a long sharp “sword” in the upper jaw; other coloured animals known in the days of Aristotle, as the sea-dragon, whose spikes and sharp dorsal fin make it dangerous to grasp with the bare hand, coraphines whose brown backs were prettily striped with blue and surrounded by a golden edging; beautiful dorades also, and troops of enormous sword-fish, fierce animals, some of them more than twenty-four feet in length. They are more herbivorous than carnivorous, and the males obeyed the slightest gesture of the female fish, as well-trained husbands should do.
But all this time I did not fail to examine the long plains of Atlantis. Sometimes the nature of the bottom obliged the Nautilus to slacken speed, and it glode with the
