The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-11-09
WALKING FISH.

walk, one thinks instinctively of the lung fish or mud -fish--those curious creatures, survivals of an ancient fau- na that seem to have made some ada vance towards becoming amphibans. and stopped short on the road. It is only raturai that one should recall them in this connection When the Australian lung-dsn was first described it was sad to leave the streams anl 2 out among the reeds and rushes on the flats which are left uncovered at low tide, and settlers averred that on still nights they often heard it moving on the river banks. This, however, has been shown not to be the case: though it is probable that all the three lung tish--from Africa, Australia and South America respectively-can move easily through the masses of aquatic vegeta- tion in their native rivers and swamps. The name walking fish" is generally given to some small species allied to the gobies of our own coasts, and found on the shores of estuaries of West Africa and the countries bordering the Indo- Pacific.
 Banks, in his Journal" speaks of t,-e
 
 these fish, which, he says. were about the size of an English minnow, and had two very strong breast fins. He and his party often found them in very dry places, where it was at first thought they had been left by the tide. Fur ther observation showed that the fish had chosen their situation voluntarily. 1 Sir Joseph fixed his attention upon one fish, and says that it Immediately fled ''leaping as nimbly as fir B, by means of it's breast fins; nor did it seem to prefer water to land, for il seen in the water it often leaped out and proceeded on dry land, and when the water was l filled with small stones standing above i the surface, would leap from stone to , stone rather than go into the water. In
 this manner I observed several pass over puddles of water, and proceed on l the other side, leaping as before.' 1 Other naturalists have added a good
 deal to our knowledge of these strange 1 fish Hickson found them in the Cele- 1 bes, and described them, as did also l Woodford, who met with them in man. grove swamps in the Pacific, where he | says, they are exceedingly common, |
 roots, to which they cling by means of 1 their strong peotoral fins, and jumping
 off into the water when any one ap- | breaches. He also found them in wells long distance from other water, in sit nations to reach which they would have
 had to make considerable journey overland. Moseley saw them, during ] the voyage of the Challenger, and in his 1 Notes of Naturalist he tells how he | chased one, in Trinoomalee Harbor.
 which skipped along the water by a { series of jumps until it reached a rock, where it sat on a ledge in the sun and
 waited till he came up, when it skipped
 along to another rock.
 Though spirit specimens have long 1 been known, and Dr. Gunther lent one | to Moseley, who drew it for an llustra- i tion to his Notes" it was not till some
 three years ago that living exampl s
 were brought to Europe. The credit of
 introducing these strange fish into zoo-
 logical collections is due to Dr. H. | Forbes, director of the Liverpool Muse
 um, where they have done remarkably
 well in shallow saltwater tanks, kept at temperature of about eighty de- | SfAeS + dnT6n0elL. when they came | they were exceedingly timid, but this
 shyness soon wore off and in shore time they learned to recognize the at- tendant as he came to feed them pr | Forbes speaks of their having two | rhodes of motion on 1and-a hop CT spring and a walk. In the former case the pectoral fins are used simultaneous
 ly as base whence to take off, and in the latter alternately, when a curious
 triple track is left in the soft mud At
 the meeting of the British association
 in 1886, Hickson pointed out that these fish in the Celebes always kept the tail | under water. and this led Prof A. c. | Haddon during the Torres Straits ex- petition, to make some experiments l which induced him to believe that the | tail does assist in respiration, and the
 microscope showed that the circulation
 of the blood was exceptionally vigorous
 in that organ. But with these conelu-
 sions Dr. Forbes is unable to agree
 The specimens which have lived in the | aquarium of the Liverpool Museum | have been kept under close and contin-
 uous observation. with the result that
 the director believes that no aid can be
 lent to respiration by the immersed
 portion of the tail. The gill-chambers
 of these fish are eapacious, and, in his