osiren annectans_, Owen. See _Linn. Trans._ 1839.]

[Footnote 2: This statement will be found in QUATREMERE'S Memoires sur
l'Egypte, tom. i. p. 17, on the authority of Abdullah ben Ahmed ben
Solaim Assouany, in his _History of Nubia_, "Simon, heritier presomptif
du royanme d'Alouah, m'a assure que l'on trouve, dans la vase qui couvre
fond de cette riviere, un grand poisson sans ecailles, qui ne ressemble
en rien aux poissons du Nil, et que, pour l'avoir, il faut creuser a une
toise et plus de profondeur." To this passage, there is appended this
note:--"Le patriarche Mendes, cite par Legrand (_Relation Hist. d'
Abyssinie_, du P. LOBO, p. 212-3) rapporte que le fleuve Mareb, apres
avoir arrose une etendue de pays considerable, se perd sous terre; et
que quand les Portugais faisaient la guerre dans ce pays, ils
fouilloient dans le sable, et y trouvoient de la bonne eau et du ban
poisson. An rapport de l'auteur de _l' Ayin Akbery_ (tom. ii, p. 146,
ed. 1800), dans le Soubah do Caschmir, pres du lieu nomme Tilahmoulah,
est une grande piece de terre qui est inondee pendant la saison des
pluies. Lorsque les eaux se sont evaporees, et que la vase est presque
seche, les habitans prennant des batons d'environ une aune do long,
qu'ils enfoncent dans la vase, et ils y trouvent quantite de grands et
petits poissons." In the library of the British Museum there is an
unique MS. of MANOEL DE ALMEIDA, written in the sixteenth century, from
which Balthasar Tellec compiled his _Historia General de Ethiopia alta_,
printed at Coimbra in 1660, and in it the above statement of Mendes is
corroborated by Almeida, who says that he was told by Joao Gabriel, a
Creole Portuguese, born in Abyssinia, who had visited the Mareb, and who
said that the "fish were to be found everywhere eight or ten palms down,
and that he had eaten of them."]

In South America the "round-headed hassar" of Guiana, _Callicthys
littoralis_, and the "yarrow," a species of the family Esocidae, although
they possess no specially modified respiratory organs, are accustomed to
bury themselves in the mud on the subsidence of water in the pools
during the dry season.[1] The _Loricaria_ of Surinam, another Siluridan,
exhibits a similar instinct, and resorts to the same expedient. Sir R.
Schomburgk, in his account of the fishes of Guiana, confirms this
account of the Callicthys, and says "they can exist in muddy lakes
without any water whatever, and great numbers of them are sometim