THE LUNGFISH 75 



toms officials and taxi drivers. They had remained for 

 weeks in tins, which rusted in spite of a coating of 

 paraffin, and which in many instances showed traces of 

 floating oil. Dm-ing this time they were unfed, since we 

 were convinced that they would travel better if putre- 

 factive contamination of the mud and water was kept to 

 a minimum. In short, they suffered an ordeal which few 

 other animals, and certainly few fishes, could have en- 

 dured, with only a single casualty attributable to hard- 

 ship other than undercooling. 



Part of the fish were placed in the New York Aquar- 

 ium, some in 'balanced' aquaria and some in running 

 fresh water. Those in the balanced aquaria died within 

 several weeks, presumably from infection. Those kept in 

 running water gradually began to eat beef-heart, aban- 

 doned their carnivorous attacks on their comrades, and 

 for three months grew with surprising rapidity until a 

 broken aquarium window required their temporary re- 

 moval to another tank containing a single specimen of 

 Lepidosiren. Within a few days the Lepidosiren and all 

 the lungfish died of an infection that ran an imusually 

 rapid course (this was before the days of antibiotics). 

 Two fish, however, which passed to the University of 

 Chicago and thence to Dr. Caryl P. Haskins, survive 

 today— twenty-eight years later— in the Aquarium of the 

 New York Zoological Society, and are now almost too 

 large to be housed in the available facihties. They would 

 be larger if the tanks were larger— because, as is known 

 to aquarists, a fish stops growing when its home ceases 

 to fit it comfortably. 



The fish that were kept in the laboratory each had an 

 aquarium to itself and infection presented less difficulty. 

 They soon ate well and began to grow, and when they 

 were well established they were put into estivation by 

 simply dropping them into 12 X 12 X 15-inch glass bat- 

 tery jars filled with wet black mud of a fine-grained 

 quality from upstate New York, chosen because it looked 

 like the mud around Lake Victoria. The mud was al- 



