220 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



instructive research, whether it be from the abundance of Natural 

 History objects, or from their varied character and striking contrast 

 as compared with the Flora and Fauna of this country. India 

 with all its richness and variety of vegetation has nothing to 

 compare with the Eucalypts and Acacias of Australia. One would, 

 hardly think, as you approach King George's Sound by steamer, and. 

 cast your eye now hungering to see land, along the barren coast 

 of Western Australia, that what appears but a dry sand-bank or a 

 sand-hillj is covered over with vegetation which, though it may be 

 scanty here, and merely scrub- like there, affords the student of nature 

 as rich a subject in foliage and timber as it is varied in the forms, 

 colour and beauty of its flower, fruit and seed. 



Even the voyage itself to Australia is full of interest to a marine 

 zoologist. Soon after you cross the Equator you see the Flying 

 fish (Exocetits volltans) jumping up in the air from the surface of 

 the disturbed water as the steamer cuts her way across it. That 

 they have no real power of flying is an undisputed fact, for — says 

 Dr. George Bennett, that veteran naturalist, who is now in the 

 eighty-third year of his age, and who was one of the earliest scien- 

 tific explorers of New South Wales — fishes of the so-called flying 

 genus (Exocetus) have " no power of elevating themselves in the 

 air after having left their native element ; for on watching them, 

 I have seen them fall much below the elevation at which they 

 originally rose from the water, but never, in any instance, could 

 I observe them rise from the height at which they first sprung." 

 They are, however, able to maintain brief temporary flights in the 

 air, says Magnin, a French writer, through the extraordinary size 

 of their membranous pectoral fins. My own idea is that they 

 quit the water only when they are frightened by the advance of a 

 steamer, or to escape the maws of sharks and. other larger pisci- 

 vorous fishes or sea-faring birds, such as the gulls and albatrosses that 

 pounce upon them with lightning speed. They hardly rise more than 

 from fifteen to eighteen feet above the level of the water, and the 

 height of their leap depends entirely upon the force of their first 

 spring, which having reached, they fall by their own weight, without 

 the slightest power of maintaining themselves in air. They fall 

 and rise again, and go on doing so by the hundred and thousand 

 for a considerable distance. In the tropical sun as they rise from 

 the silvery crest of the deep blue wave thrown into ample folds 

 by the advancing prow of the ship, their silver blue wings and. 



