Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-03-24
QUEER FISH WITH LUNGS
Accounts of Them Seem to Border on the
Marvellous
The Most Famous Specimen of This
Species is the Climbing
Perch of India.


Written for The Evening Star.
Every one knows that most fishes breathe
in different manner from that of the
greater number of animals, and that they
get the oxygen necessary for their life from
the water, and not directly from the at
mosphele. Water dssolves a certain
amount of oxygen, and the gills of fishes
take this out of the water as our lungs take
it from the mixed air we breathe The gtlls
are bundles of fine blood vessels covered by
a delicate membrane, that permits oxygen
to pass through it to the blood so long as it
is moist, but usually when a fish is taken
out of water the gills dry and suffocation
follows
The gills are very thin. and may be torn
or injured by slight violence Mud. sand
saWduSt or any of the many similar impu-
rites IN water may lacerate or irritate
then, so nature has put filters, like combs
just in front of them to strain such foreign
matters out of the water before reaching
the real gills. These filters are called gill
rakers, and act as do the gratings put
over cutters to hold back trash that might
DOCK them up; but the gutter gratings get
clossed sometimes, and so do the gill rak-
ers When this happens the fish must die
and II is well known that the sawdust
thrown into our streams has been a chief
FACTOR in the destruction of our fresh
water fishes.
Not Dependent on ellis.
But all fishes are not dependent on their
gills. Some of them like our common earn
and goldfish, come to the surface now and
then to take in draughts of air, and cells
can travel overland around dams or other
distractions. These efforts are trivial COM
pared with those of some fishes found in
other parts of the world
Ihese are the lung fishes, or dipnoi as
naturalists call them, and the ACCOUNTS of
tnem seem to border on the marvellous In
one group of these animals the ..swim-
piadder Is a kind of lung, instead of
mere float as 1t Is in most fishes and in
some strange fishes in India there is a hoI-
low space in the skull that acts as a lung.
me walls of 1t having clusters of blood yes
sells about it, Just as the yesicles of our
lungs have. These fishes can bury them
serves deep in the mud when the dry sea
son comes on and live through it till the
rams Ill the rivers again. A fish in the
Iampla river makes cocoon of mucus and
mud, in which it has been brought from
Senegambia to London, where the cocoon
was gently washed off and the fish found
10 be nVing. The naturalist, Natterer dis
covered similar fish in the Amazon hut
this one, the Lep!dosiren of science is one
OF the rarest specimens in museums In thu.
United States there is a fish the bowfin
that can be drowned by stretching a net
below the surface of the water SO that it
cannot get to air.
Found Buried in CLAW,
DIR. Hector, the government geologist of
New Zealand, reported finding some fish
about five and half inches long among
the roots of trees at a depth of four feet
in stin clay. The place where they were
found was some thirty-seven feet above the
Hokiuka river, where there had been a
back water during a time of flood The
mud nshes are common in New Zealand
ana the early settlers were surprised TO
dig up fish with their potatoes as farmers
on Long Island said to be in Doubt
whether their spades will unearth potatoes
or CLAIMS.
The most famous of the lung fishes is the
climbing perch of India, that has often heen
found several feet up the mangroyes. These
animals migrate overland when their own
streams fail and are captured in great
numbers by the natives, to whom they are
great del1cacies. Ceylon has several spe-
cles OF them. The island is dotted over
With boys of thick, chocolate colored mud
covered by a sod of reeds and grasses ana
this mud teens with fish. The Cinealese
clear OF space and wait till the fish come
up to fill their air biadders, when they
catch them in strong dipnets
Sir John Bowring says that some lung
nshes IN siam go much as three miles
from water, and that they have been seen
mapping along d dusty road.
The lung fishes constitute a wonderful
ana interesting group of animals, and show
tne WIDE range through which nature can
aoapt creatures to their surroundings
Biology is full of such instances hut few
are more striking than this.