LABYRINTHINE APPARATUS OF LABYRINTHIC PISHES. 501 



On the Construction and Purpose of the so-called 

 Labyrinthine Apparatus of the Labyrinthic 

 Fishes. 



By 



Doctor Nicholas Zograff, 



of Moscow. 



With Plate XLI. 



In the year 1797 two Dutch sailors, Daldorf and John, sent 

 information to the Linnean Society of London as to the re- 

 markable capacity of Anabas scandens to crawl from one 

 pool of water into another, to climb up bushes and trees, to 

 spend several days without water, &c, before the beginning of 

 a dry season. 1 Since then almost every year one or the other 

 journal or paper has given various travellers' accounts of the 

 interesting life and habits of these fishes. Notwithstanding 

 the variety of these accounts they all agree in one respect, 

 viz. in trying to show that the Labyrinthici are remarkable 

 for their highly-developed capacity of accommodation, and for 

 their striking viability. Cuvier and Valenciennes, for example, 

 in their natural history of fish, tell us how the Anabus can 

 spend hot seasons in the slime of a dry water-basin (very 

 much like the Protopteri), or how in the markets of the East 

 Indies the Ophiocephali will keep on moving a long time 

 after their insides have been cleaned out by the fishmongers. 

 Besides that, we learn from the accounts of travellers that 



1 * Transactions of the Liunean Society of London,' vol. iii, 1797. 



