評論
打印
A triggerfish, I said.
是一條箭魚。我于是說了。
It's a Chinese triggerfish, Ned Land replied.
尼德·蘭回答：是一條中國箭魚。
Genus Balistes, family Scleroderma, order Plectognatha, Conseil muttered.
康塞爾于是低聲說：箭魚屬，硬皮科，固顎目。
Assuredly, Ned and Conseil in combination added up to one outstanding naturalist.
毫無疑問，尼德·蘭和康塞爾，他們倆合起來，會成為一位出色的生物學家。
The Canadian was not mistaken. Cavorting around the Nautilus was a school of triggerfish with flat bodies, grainy skins, armed with stings on their dorsal fins, and with four prickly rows of quills quivering on both sides of their tails. Nothing could have been more wonderful than the skin covering them: white underneath, gray above, with spots of gold sparkling in the dark eddies of the waves. Around them, rays were undulating like sheets flapping in the wind, and among these I spotted, much to my glee, a Chinese ray, yellowish on its topside, a dainty pink on its belly, and armed with three stings behind its eyes; a rare species whose very existence was still doubted in Lacépède's day, since that pioneering classifier of fish had seen one only in a portfolio of Japanese drawings.
加拿大人并沒有弄錯。面前是一群箭魚，壓扁的身軀。皺紋的皮膚，背脊上有箭鏈式的武器，在諾第留斯號周圍游來游去，鼓動著它們尾巴兩邊的四排尖刺。再沒有比它們的外表更使人贊賞的了，上邊灰色，下面全白，點點的金黃在波浪的漩渦中間閃閃發亮，多么美麗！在箭魚中間，有鰓魚，像隨鳳招展的臺布，翻來轉去，鰓魚中我看到了使我很喜歡的那種中國鯉魚，它上半身黑黃色，肚下淡淡的玫瑰色,眼睛后面帶有三根刺；這種魚是很少有的一種，拉色別德當時甚至于還不敢相信有這種魚，他只在一本日本的圖畫書中看見過。
For two hours a whole aquatic army escorted the Nautilus. In the midst of their leaping and cavorting, while they competed with each other in beauty, radiance, and speed, I could distinguish some green wrasse, bewhiskered mullet marked with pairs of black lines, white gobies from the genus Eleotris with curved caudal fins and violet spots on the back, wonderful Japanese mackerel from the genus Scomber with blue bodies and silver heads, glittering azure goldfish whose name by itself gives their full description, several varieties of porgy or gilthead (some banded gilthead with fins variously blue and yellow, some with horizontal heraldic bars and enhanced by a black strip around their caudal area, some with color zones and elegantly corseted in their six waistbands), trumpetfish with flutelike beaks that looked like genuine seafaring woodcocks and were sometimes a meter long, Japanese salamanders, serpentine moray eels from the genus Echidna that were six feet long with sharp little eyes and a huge mouth bristling with teeth; etc.
在兩小時內，整整一大群的水族部隊圍繞在諾第留斯號周圍。在它們的戲耍，它們的跳躍中間，當它們以美麗、光彩和速度來彼此比賽對抗的時候，我分別認出：青色的海婆婆，帶有雙層黑線的海誹綢魚，圓團團的尾，白顏色，背上帶紫紅斑點的蝦虎魚，身上藍色，頭銀白色的日本海中的美麗鰭魚，不用描寫，單單名字就可以看出的輝煌的碧琉璃魚，或帶藍色或帶黃色的鰭的條紋鰓魚，尾上特別有一條黑帶的線條鰓魚，漂亮的裹在六條帶中的線帶鰓魚，真正笛子口一般的笛口魚，間有長至一米的海鵪鶉，日本的火蛇，多刺的鰻魚，眼睛細小生動，大嘴中長有利牙的六英尺長蛇等等。
