FLYING FISHES AND THEIR HABITS. 



By Theodore Gill. 



Flifjht is a procMiiineiit attribiitt' of tcrrostrial animals and is more 

 especially associated by inost persons with the birds, but it is by no 

 means an uncommon faculty. Indeed, not to be able to fly is the ex- 

 ception for land animals, if number of species determine such a 

 problem. This w\\\ be evident when it is ivmembered that all but a 

 small percentage of insects fly, and insects arc far more numerous 

 than all other inhabitants of the land combined. Furthermore, the 

 birds, whose chief attribute is the power of fliglit and adaptation 

 therefor, are more numerous than all other terrestrial vertebrates to- 

 gether. We nuiy repeat, therefore, that non-flight is exceptional and 

 tlight the normal provision for animals generally; flight, indeed, has 

 been developed anew, time after time, in animals with limbs of the 

 ambulatorial type. 



The power of flight is also generally attributed to certain fishes, and 

 it is interesting and significant that the adaptation and power which 

 enable fishes to course through the air have also been developed in 

 several entirely distinct groups. The faculty exists in its greatest 

 perfection in tAvo widely distijict families, one (the Exoccetids) being 

 unarmed, soft-finned fishes of the group called Synentognathi and 

 the other {the Dactylopterids) being armed acanthopterygian fishes 

 related to the Gurnards. There are other fishes — among them rela- 

 tions of the Exocoetines and Dactylopterids — which have the power 

 of progressing through the air to some extent, but their power to do 

 so is so nnich less than those generally called flying fishes that they 

 need not be considered here. Those to be now described will there- 

 fore be confined to the two families indicated — the Exoccetids and 

 Dactylopterids, 



In all the flying fishes the power of flight, or rather sustentation in 

 ihe air, is effected in the same manner, that is, by the elongation of 



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