j jo The Ottawa Naturalist. [March 



Society mentions having taken a climbing perch in the act of 

 ascending a palm-tree which grew near a pond. " The fish had 

 reached a height of five teet above the water, and was going still 

 higher."* Furthermore, Drs. Parker and Haswell in their '"Text- 

 Book of Zoology " state that the climbing perch l> has become so 

 thoroughly a land animal that it is drowned if immersed in water." 



There are also certain gobies of the Indo-Pacific which move 

 about over the ground at low tide in search of their food, and take 

 rapid leaps to escape danger. It has been asserted ot these also 

 that thev would drown if forced for an indefinite time to remain 

 under water. One of those gobies I have myself seen resting on a 

 moist object in its aquarium. 



Whilst engaged in some Fisheries matters, at the Trent 

 River, Ontario, a few years ago I had same fishes boxed up and 

 expressed to Ottawa. On opening the box on my arrival I found 

 some of the mud-pouts still alive and when replaced in water they 

 were soon themselves again ; and whilst turning over moist stones 

 along the shore at the west side of Vancouver Island I was sur- 

 prised to find numerous little frisky, elongated, and compressed 

 fishes which were there awaiting the return of the tide. 



Fishes with Both Eyes ox the Same Side of the Head. 



There are instances of distortion in nature. I mean by this 

 term not some individual freak, but a distortion brought about by 

 a modification of structure permanently affecting a whole group of 

 creatures. The flat-fishes, which are very compressed, are an 

 instance of this. When the newly hatched halibut, or the plaice, 

 or the flounder, has left the egg, it is essentially just like any other 

 fish, with an eye on either side of the head. Very soon, however, 

 the eye of one side, in certain kinds the right in others the lelt, 

 moves around to meet its fellow, thus leaving one side of the fish 

 eyeless and blind. The jaws also undergo distortion, and the 

 eyeless side remains whitish like the under parts of other fishes, 

 whilst the eyed side becomes covered with pigment coloring sub- 

 stance. The fish then lies on the blind side, which serves the 

 same purpose as the under part of fishes in general. 



*Dr, Gunther : 'An Introduction to the Study of Fishes,' p. 516. 



