Yokels

Let us take the portrait of this fish. Doubtless the reader figures to himself a fish of "a lean and hungry look," a very Cassius of a fish, with the lantern-jaws of a pike. But, in fact, the Pirai is somewhat aldermanic and like a beam in figure, with a fighting-looking kind of nose, and a wonderously expressive eye. The jaw is square, powerful, and locked into a very large head for the size of the fish; and that is a fat, plump head, too, but radiated over with strong bone and gristle. The teeth - ah! They would condemn him anywhere, for here is a fish sixteen inches long with the teeth almost of a shark.

I'm re-reading my oldest books today. That's a discription of a piranha from "Glimpses of the Animate Kingdom", published in 1886. The other book I'm reading is "Anomalies and Curiousities of Medicine", published in 1896. The first book is hilarious, but the second book is horrific. It's funny when octopi are called "devilfish", but it's scary when you see some of the stuff that can happen to your ballsack.