34© THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pleasure right outside the sockets, so as to look in whatever direction 

 be chooses, without even taking the trouble to turn his head to left or 

 right, backward or forward. At ebb-tide this singular peripatetic 

 goby literally walks straight out of the water, and promenades the 

 bare beach erect on two legs in search of small crabs and other stray 

 marine animals left behind by the receding waters. If you try to 

 catch him, he hops away briskly much like a frog, and stares back at 

 you grimly over his left shoulder with his squinting optics. So com- 

 pletely adapted is he for this amphibious 'longshore existence that his 

 big eyes, unlike those of most other lisb, are formed for seeing in the 

 air as well as in the water. Nothing can be more ludicrous than to 

 watch him suddenly thrusting these very movable orbs right out of 

 their sockets like a j^air of telescopes, and twisting them round in all 

 directions so as to see in front, behind, on top, and below, in one 

 delightful circular sweep. 



There is also a certain curious tropical American carp, which, 

 though it hardly deserves to be considered in the strictest sense as 

 a fish out of water, yet manages to fall nearly half-way under that 

 peculiar category, for it always swims with its head partly above 

 the surface and partly below. But the funniest thing in this queer 

 arrangement is the fact that one half of each eye is out in the air and 

 the other half is beneath in the water. Accordingly, the eye is di- 

 vided horizontally by a dark strip into two distinct and unlike portions, 

 the upper one of which has a pupil adapted to vision in the air alone, 

 while the lower is adapted to seeing in the water only. The fish, in 

 fact, always swims with its eye half out of the water, and it can see 

 as well on dry land as in its native ocean. Its name is Anableps, but, 

 in all probability, it does not wish the fact to be generally known. 



The llying-fish are fish out of water in a somewhat different and 

 more transitory sense. Their aerial excursions are brief and rapid ; 

 they can only fly a very little way, and have soon to take once more 

 for safety to their own more natural and permanent element. More 

 than forty kinds of the family are known, in appearance very much 

 like English herrings, but with the front fins expanded and modified 

 into veritable wings. It is fashionable nowadays among naturalists 

 to assert that the fljing-fish don't fly; that they merely jump hori- 

 zontally out of the water with a powerful impulse, and fall again as 

 soon as the force of the first impetus is entirely spent. When men 

 endeavor to persuade you to such folly, believe them not. For my 

 own part, I have seen the flying-fish fly — deliberately fly, and flutter, 

 and rife again, and change the direction of their flight in mid-air, ex- 

 actly after the fashion of a big dragon-fly. If the other people who 

 have watched them haven't succeeded in seeing them fly, that is their 

 own fault, or, at least, their own misfortune ; perhaps their eyes 

 weren't quick enough to catch the rapid, though to me perfectly recog- 

 nizable, hovering and fluttering of the gauze-like wings ; but I have 



