Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1874 — A Queer Fish. [ARTICLE]

A Queer Fish.

That most curious fish, the anabas—which respires and lives and thrives as well out of water as in it; which has its rampages upon the plains and fresh pastures as well as its gambols among the weeds under the briny w r aves, and which is even reported to climb aerial trees as easy as it does the coral shrubs of the sea—has been known from remote antiquity to exist among the wonders of the East, but never until now has it visited the Western world. France is the fortunate country which, thanks to the learned pisciculturist, M. Carbonnier, has welcomed into its aquariums a living anabas from the far-off Indies. There is nothing in the exterior appearance of the anabas to indicate its aerial habits or capacities. It is purely a fish in its formation, and its power of creeping or walking upon the earth is due simply to the fins and tail which control its movements in the sea, and which belong only to the tribes of the finny deep. A post mortem examination is necessary to discover the secret of its amphibiousness. In the head is found the special organ which invests it with the faculty of living two .lives, as it were—aquatic and aerial. On each side of the head, instead of being hard and rigid, as with other fishes, the upper pharyngeal arches are di vided into fine, irregular laminae oi plates, more or leps numerous, form ing cavities and little cells capable of containing a considerable amount of water. The theory of science has beep that a fish dies out of water, not from immediate want of oxygen, but because the gHI become dry and unsuited to its transmission. Hence, Cuvier believed that the labyrinthiform cavity in the head of the anabas was a- reservoir of water which the fish carried full when it went upon its land excursions for the purpose of moistening its gills when occasion required. The French scientists, however, have discovered that it is nothing of the sort; that Cuvier, so long an undisputed authority in the matter, was wholly mistaken; and that the cavity, so far from being a water reservoir, as alleged, never contains water, but has simply a surface that secretes a certain humidity in which the air for respiration is maintained. The anabas inhabits all parts of India and the Indian archipelago, living mostly in marshes and inlets which are occasionally dry. When its

habitaes are destitute of water the anabas, fish as it is, flees to the land in searefe of a livelihood. Its peregrinations continue many days, and sometimes even months. Nothing is more curious and interesting than its manner of locomotion. No sooner is it upon terra firma than it closes its mouth and its opercuies or gill-covers, and no contraction or flapping is any longer seen; then, by a general movement, all its fins are erected, the pectorals being extended like two arms; the fish supports itself in an upright position by means of strokes right and left with its tail; and aided by an inferior propulsion of the anal fin it progresses with a lively and easy motion, using its arms like oars as it were, and sculling from side to side alternately, in accord with the strokes of the tail. As to the ability of the anabas to climb trees, modern skepticism generally regards that merely a fish story, although enthusiastic naturalists continue to assert the fact, and even to verify by statements which challenge both charity and incredulity. In the latter part of the last century a Danish gentleman, M. Duldorff, communicated an account of the habits of the anabas to the Liqnaean Society of Londpn, in which he stated that he had himself seen it in the act of ascending a palm tree, and had taken it at a height of five feet from the ground. AndM. de la Blanchere, from whose statement in La Nature we have derived the fact here given, affirms that a friend assured him that he had shot an anabas in a tree. In view of this marvelous assurance, M. Blanchere naively remarks that truth is sometimes stranger Than fiction. —Boston Traveller.