74 Fish Stories 



the deep blue waters of the Kuro Shiwo, the warm Black 

 Current of Japan. 



This view of the case is fully confirmed by my scientific 

 colleague, Dr. Jordan, and by Dr. Gilbert, who also has seen 

 many flying fishes in many seas, but with always the same 

 conclusion as to how they do it. Though I have never 

 played a fish in the air, I have more than once hooked a 

 sea bird which had dived for my bait and soared away with 

 it. I have seen a bald eagle hooked in a similar way, the 

 big bird darting down at the flying fish bait on the surface. 



In the South Pacific, on every muddy shore from Japan 

 to the Marquesas, an interesting little fish is found, known 

 as the mud-skipper. One has but to tell the naked truth 

 to relate the most unbelievable of fish stories at its expense. 

 An angler stated to me that in fishing at Fiji he was obliged 

 to wade through a muddy flat on the Rewa River, and 

 around some mangrove trees, and while stumbling along he 

 started what at first he thought was a frog, a little creature 

 which leaped from a root to the mud, and hopped away. On 

 looking closely, he saw that it was a fish, which, far from 

 being discomfited by the lack of water, had crawled out of 

 what is popularly considered its native element, and was 

 feeding alongshore twenty feet from the water, while other 

 fishes were resting on the clumps of roots. On another oc- 

 casion he succeeded in capturing one of these fishes, with 

 hook and line, out of water, perhaps the most extraordinary 

 angling feat known in the annals of the gentle art. Pro- 

 fessor Moseley, naturalist of the " Challenger " expedition, 

 thus refers to this strange fish : 



" Hopping about on the mud, beneath the mangroves on 

 the shore, was the extraordinary fish, Pcriophthahmis, at 

 which I had often been astonished in Ceylon. This little fish 

 skips along on the surface of the water, by a series of jumps, 

 of the distance of as much as a foot, with great rapidity, 

 and prefers escaping in this way to swimming beneath the 

 surface. In Trincomali Harbor I have chased one which 



