Ruth Anne Clark, aged 9, of Decatur,

How does a fish swim?_

A fish is at home in the water from the moment he hatches from an egg, No one has to teach him to swim. There are some 20,000 different kinds of fishes. Some are better swimmers than others. The flounder wallows in the muddy floor of his watery home, The mackerel would suffocate if he stopped swimming for a minute.

Let's see how the handsome, delicious striped bass swims. He is a fishy looking fish, just built for graceful swimming. His slender body slips through the water like a boat. It is tapered at each end,

He has no arms and legs to do a fancy crawl stroke. But he has eight­ fins. Does he use those fins to knife. through the water? No, for as he swims along his fins hardly move at all.

What does move is his tail, The tapering hind part of his body is made of powerful muscles.  He swings the hind part of his body from side to side as he glides along. This movement and the wide tail fin help to move the water this way and that.

The swishing movement sets up little currents in the water, This is what pushes the graceful body along. The fish swims forward by swishing his tail from side to side, Coasting along, he swishes only slightly. But to put on a spurt, he swishes in great curves from side t o side,

Mr. Bass has two sharp fins along his back and another underneath in front of his tail. These fins acts like keels. They keep his body balanced and upright as he glides along.

The other fins are used for turning, slowing up and putting on the brakes. There are two pairs of these fins, One pair is set close together on the under part of his stomach. These are the pelvic fins. The other pair is placed one on either side of his body behind the gills. These are pectoral, fins. The pelvic and pectoral fine are his brakes and steering wheel.

How does the fish stay just so deep in the water? Why doesn't he sink to the bottom or float to the top? He has a way to control that too. He can decide whether he wants to swim high or low in the water.

Inside the body of the bass is a long shaped pocket of gas. He can make himself lighter by taking in more gas, he can make himself heavier by getting rid of some of the gas in the swim bladder.

So Mr. Bass can swim forward, he can brake and turn and he can rise up or down in the water as he chooses. However, he wouldn’t ­swim backwards even if he could. For, in order to breathe he must keep a stream of water flowing in through his mouth and out through his gills. He suffocates for want of oxygen when he is forced to go backwards through the water.