ch (_Anabas scandens_) of India. The vagaries of this little fish
have been recorded from the earliest times, and numerous modern
witnesses have borne record to its powers. Mr E. Layard once encountered
several travelling along a hot dusty gravel-road in the mid-day sun.[85]
Daldorf, a Danish zoologist of reputation, asserts that he has seen this
species in the act of climbing palm-trees, effecting its ascent by means
of fins and tail, with the aid of its spinous gill-covers. There is,
however, some doubt whether he was not under mistake in this, though the
fact of its crawling up the banks and living out of water is abundantly
known.

On the coasts of Ceylon, according to its accomplished historian,--on
the rocks which are washed by the surf, there are multitudes of a
curious little fish, (_Salarias alticus_,) which possesses the faculty
of darting along the surface of the water, and running up the wet
stones, with the utmost ease and rapidity. By aid of its pectoral and
ventral fins and gill-cases, it moves across the damp sand, ascends the
roots of the mangroves, and climbs up the smooth face of the rocks in
search of flies; adhering so securely as not to be detached by repeated
assaults of the waves. These little creatures are so nimble, that it is
almost impossible to lay hold of them, as they scramble to the edge, and
plunge into the sea on the slightest attempt to molest them. They are
from three to four inches in length, and of a dark-brown colour, almost
indistinguishable from the rocks they frequent.[86]

In all these cases probably, the power of sustaining a protracted
privation of water depends on a peculiar structure of the pharynx, which
is divided by membranous plates into cells which the fish can fill at
pleasure with water, and by ejecting small portions at a time can
moisten its gills, and thus preserve the filaments of these organs in a
fit condition to maintain the circulation and oxygenation of the blood.
These labyrinthal water-chambers are particularly numerous and
complicated in the _Anabas_ just mentioned. This, however, has no
analogy with the lung of the _Lepidosiren_.

[70] _Mag. Nat. Hist._, ii. 322.

[71] From the _Times_ of Jan. 24, 1861.

[72] The _Oscillatoria_ is a genus of _plants_; it is a microscopic
_Alga_ of wire-like form belonging to the great Confervoid family,
having the remarkable peculiarity of spontaneous and apparently
voluntary motion.

[73] Latrobe's _Alpenstock_,