FROG-FISHES. 177 



two or three days at a time. Like the Diodons, 

 which in some other particulars also they resem- 

 ble, they have the habit of inflating the body 

 by the inhalation of air until they are as round 

 as a blown bladder ; this is supposed to be princi- 

 pally done, when under the excitement of fear 

 or anger. So tenacious of life are they that they 

 have been transported alive from the tropical 

 seas to Holland, where they were sold as high 

 as twelve ducats a-piece. 



MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes have, with much 

 labour and skill, distinguished many species of 

 this genus formerly confounded in the Lophius 

 histrio of Bloch. The appropriateness of the 

 appellation histrio, signifying a mountebank, for 

 these fishes, has been misunderstood. It was 

 meant to allude, not to any fancied activity or 

 agility, a quality which they are very far from 

 possessing in general, but to the peculiarity of 

 their coloration, their hues, often diverse and 

 strongly contrasted, being distributed in patches 

 and irregular spots. 



Yet some of the species have a certain agility. 

 In the great estuaries that indent the northern 

 coast ■ of Australia, from which the tide ebbs far 

 back in the dry season, leaving them broad flats 

 of mud, there is one of these so abundant, and 

 capable of taking such vigorous leaps, that some 

 voyagers have mistaken them, at first sight, for 

 flocks of birds. 



It is doubtless an Antennarius, and perhaps this 

 very species, that is thus described by Mr. Earl, 

 as observed on the coast of Borneo : ** Large 

 tracts of mud had been left uncovered by the 

 receding tide, and flocks of gulls and other birds 



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