Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1899 — FOUND IN A FISH. [ARTICLE]

FOUND IN A FISH.

Cnriens Fact Abaat the “Murray Cod” of Australia. There is a large fish found in the rivers of western Australia known as the “Murray Cod.” Thia sish —which is 1 delicious for the table—is remarkable for its size, sometimes weighing as much as 150 pounds; but the strangest thing about it is the fact that it carries around a photograph inside its body. At least the natives say that it is a photograph, and certainly it looks like one. When the Murray cod is cut open a bladder is seen, extending along the backbone from just behind the gills to the fatty part of' the tail. In a 30pound fish the bladder is about 12 inches long and) an inch or more in width. Within this is a film, or thin membrane, through which runs a delicate tracery composed of a multitude of little red lines, interlacing like the frost work on a window pane in winter. This film can be peeled off and spread upon a sheet of paper or a piece of cloth, to which it readily adheres. It then forms a very pretty picture. Sometimes it looks like a bit of pressed seaweed; sometimes it seems to portray a miniature landscape with a dark forest background; but in most cases it presents a surprisingly distinct outline of a single tree, the Australian gum tree, a species of eucalyptus. To explain this singular fact the aborigines have an ingenious theory. They say that the picture thus imprinted) on the membrane represents the tree which overshadows the pool where the big fish made its haunt—in short, that it is a real photograph. Fanciful as the notion seems, it gains a certain plausibility from the known habits of the fish, which is extremely solitary and exclusive in its ways. The Murray cod really does make its home in some forest-shadowedi pool, to which it always returns after its excursions abroad for food or exercise, leading a curiously hermit-like existence; it will allow no other member of its specie? to intrude upon its domain. Here the sullen creature spends its l life, year in and year out; it never changes its residence. Here it grows from insignificant minnowhood 1 until it becomes a king among fishes, as big and heavy as a well-developed man, and for the greater part of each day the shadow of its favorite tree falls upon its slimy back. It is little wonder, therefore, that the untutored'but imaginative savages,puzzled by the lifelike picture which they find in the bladder, conclude that the familiar scene has become photographed in the creature’s very substance.—N. Y. Journal.