The Plaice is the best known of these flat fish, so we will try to find how its life is spent in the deep sea.

Have you ever watched those little sailing-vessels which go a-shrimping? They carry a large net--a shrimp-trawl, it is called--which is drawn over the sandy home of the Shrimp. When the trawl is hauled up it may contain not only Shrimps, but the other dwellers in sandy places. Among these, sad to say, is often a mass of baby Plaice and other flat fish. Tiny little fellows they are, some hardly as large as a postage stamp. They are thrown aside, being of no use to the fisherman.

Now these babies are quite flat, darkish on the upper side, white on the other side, like the Plaice you see in the shop. They are not such new babies after all. Though such wee mites, it is more than six weeks since they left the egg; and, in that time, they have passed through wonderful changes, as you will see.

Plaice lay a great many eggs, which float about in the sea. Most are gobbled up by those sea-creatures--and they are many--who love fish-eggs for dinner. From each remaining egg a baby Plaice escapes. At first it floats upside down at the surface of the sea, and eats nothing at all. Then it rights itself, and begins to swallow the tiny creatures which swarm in sea-water.

Strange to tell, this baby Plaice is not a bit like its mother. It is not a flat fish now, but a "round" fish. It has one eye on each side of its head, and you would expect it to grow up like any other round fish.

For about a month this small, transparent youngster hardly alters. Then it grows deeper in the body, and begins to swim near the bottom of the sea. At last it lies on one side, and its life as a "round" fish is over.

A fish lying thus on its side would have one eye buried in the sa