FISH IN PALESTINE 417 



Mediterranean fresh-water fauna, two in the Nile, seven in the 

 Tigris, Euphrates, and adjacent rivers, ten in other parts of 

 Syria, while sixteen are quite peculiar to the basin of the 

 Jordan. The fish fauna is very isolated, but shows affinities 

 to that of the Ethiopian zoo-geographical region, and probably 

 dates from a geological time when the Jordan and the rivers 

 of North-East Africa belonged to the same system. ^ 



Of these fish, two demand notice. 



(i) Chromis simonis. In the rare instances where fish 

 take any care of their eggs or young, the task nearly always 

 devolves on the male ; here, the husband performs it by taking 

 the ova into his mouth, till their development in the large 

 cheek-pouches causes such swelling that he is unable to use 

 his mouth. This uncomfortable condition exists and increases 

 until as fry about four inches long they quit the paternal abode. 2 



(2) Clarias macracanthus, found in the Nile, as well as in 

 the Lake of Gennesaret. In their spawning migration they 

 have often to travel stretches of dwindling streams with water 

 insufficient to cover them, or absent altogether. 3 By means 

 of an accessory bronchial organ they can live at least two 

 whole days out of water. When they thus behold all the 

 wonders of terrestrial existence, including its choicest perfec- 

 tion, Man, is it surprising that they " utter a squeaking or 

 hissing sound," or teste Masterman, " cat-like squeak " ? 



^ Dr. Boulenger points out, however, that the af&nity between the two 

 rivers is restricted to a few species of the Silurids and Cichhds, whose importance 

 is outweighed by the total absence from the Jordan of such characteristic 

 African famiUes as the Polypteridas, Mormyridae, and Characinida. 



* This statement of Tristram's is controverted by Masterman, op. cit., p. 44, 

 note I, who writes, "This is impossible. They leave the shelter of their 

 fathers' mouths when about the size of a lentil, and apparently never return." 

 The male Pipe fish Syngnathus acus not only carries the eggs, but also 

 the young fish in a pouch, in a manner similar to the kangaroo. The young, 

 even after they have begun to swim about, return when alarmed to the 

 parental cavity. There are only one or two instances of a female fish taking 

 sole charge of the ova : of these is Aspreio batrachus, which by lying on the 

 top of her eggs presses them in to her spongy body and carries them thus, till 

 they are hatched. 



' In islands off Northern Australia are found walking and cUmbing fish, 

 Periophihalmus koelreuteri and P. anstralis, which ascend the roots of the 

 mangrove by the use of ventral and pectoral fins, and jump and skip on the 

 mud with the alertness of rabbits {The Confessions of a Beachcomber, p. 204, 

 London, 191 3). 



Ktesias, a possible contemporary of Herodotus, writes that in India are 

 little fish whose habit it is now and then to have a ramble on dry land. 



