336 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 3 



less deductive studies been expended in inductive research — careful 

 observations on the flight of fishes — the controversy would long ago 

 have been settled, or at least would have been rendered very one- 

 sided. In fact, a few hours of unprejudiced and close observation 

 would usually have sufficed to prick the bubblelike theories born of 

 deductions. 



Now that the sight of airplanes, fulfilling the prophecies of Lang- 

 ley, is a commonplace experience of civilized races, the erroneous be- 

 lief that flying fishes must flap their wings in order to fly is much less 

 common than in previous years. False deductions that the weight 

 of the fish's body can be sustained in the air only by a vibration of 

 the wings, or that any body — even a moving plane — must continu- 

 ously fall unless it continues to expend energy to counteract gravity, 

 are not likely to be made by one who has watched airplanes with 

 motors shut off, or, better, gliders, soar through the air and often 

 rise as they proceed, with their planes clearly silhouetted against 

 the sky. 



Ill 



For lack of space, no attempt is made to review here the very ex- 

 tensive, though mostly incidental and trivial, literature on the flight 

 of fishes. This has been attempted by several writers referred to in 

 the selected references given at the close of this article, notably by a 

 German naturalist, Fr. Ahlborn (1895) , by an American ichthyologist 

 long associated with the Smithsonian Institution, Theodore Nicholas 

 Gill (1905), and by an Englishman, E. H. Hankin (1914, 1920). As 

 I wrote recently in presenting detailed field observations on the 

 subject (Hubbs, 1933), "perhaps too much ink has already been 

 used in discussing the flight of fishes." 



Disregarding this voluminous literature, we may proceed at once 

 to a discussion of just how the typical (" four- winged " or " bi- 

 plane ") flymg fishes fly, according to the virtually unanimous 

 views of recent, critical observers. A brief epitome is given in pic- 

 torial form. Figure 1, utilized for this purpose, was made by Grace 

 Eager under my direction, as a substitute for photographs, prefer- 

 ably motion pictures, which still remain for some skilled wildlife 

 photographer to contribute. This would be by no means an impos- 

 sible task in certain tropic seas, where day after day hundreds of 

 these fishes rise to soar away before a vessel. 



UNDER-WATER MOVEMENTS 



Under water, flying fishes swim with great speed, with both pairs 

 of wings folded back against the body so that they resemble a trim 

 submarine (fig. la). This may be seen especially well from a vessel 



