Fishing in the Air 75 



skipped thus before me until it reached a rock, where it sat 

 on a ledge out of the water in the sun, and waited until I 

 came up, when it skipped along to another rock. 



"The fish are very nimble on land, and difficult to catch. 

 They use their very muscular pectoral fins to spring with, 

 and when resting on shore, the fore part of the body is 

 raised and supported on these." 



Many anglers who habitually fish from boats have had 

 fishes leap into them, but to see a fish deliberately go ashore, 

 like a turtle, or rather like a frog, to hunt for food, is to 

 witness one of the wonders of angling. But then the mud- 

 skipper is not much of a fish. 



My colleague, who now takes up the pen, has likewise had 

 a good many experiences with this curious little goby. At 

 one time, after helping to dedicate a new Samoan Church, he 

 found a pile of stones at the upper limit of high tide, on 

 which a dozen or so of mud-skippers had crawled to wait 

 until the tide came back. The largest of these were about 

 six inches long. My Samoan men rolled the stones away, 

 and the fishes left exposed in the rocks were about as easy 

 to catch as lizards. 



There is in Pago-Pago a pointer dog who spends most of 

 his time in pointing for these mud-skippers, as he sees them 

 crawling about in the mangrove bushes in their search for 

 insects. He has never caught one, but he knows that there 

 is something uncanny about a fish that has such habits. So 

 he points and barks, hoping that a fisherman will come to 

 help him. But no one ever pays any attention to him ; and 

 so, if he is still alive — this was in 1902 — we may be sure 

 that he is pointing and barking yet. 



But this is not the only fish that has this habit. There are 

 other species of gobies related to the mud-skipper, more- 

 over there is a small black blenny in the South Seas, who 

 watches on lonely lava rocks, above the reach of the waves. 

 It never climbs trees, but sits on rocks, and it is as quick 

 as the liveliest lizard. The black coat of mail of the wrecked 



