392 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. 



positions, Yon Baer writes &quot;A fish, swimming towards 

 the shore, desires to take a walk, but finds his fins useless. 

 They diminish in breadth for want of use, and at the same 

 time elongate. This goes on with children and grandchil 

 dren for a few millions of years, and at last who can be as 

 tonished that the fins become feet ? It is still more natural 

 that the fish in the meadow, finding no water, should gape 

 after air, thereby, in a like period of time developing 

 lungs ; the only difficulty being that in the meanwhile, 

 a few generations must manage without breathing at 

 all.&quot; Though, as thus presented, the belief in a 



transition looks laughable ; and though such derivation of 

 terrestrial vertebrates by direct modification of the piscine 

 type, is untenable ; yet we must not therefore conclude that 

 no migrations of the kind alleged can have taken place. 

 The adage that &quot; truth is stranger than fiction,&quot; applies quite 

 as much to Nature in general as to human life. Besides the 

 fact that there are certain fish which actually do &quot; take a 

 walk &quot; without any very obvious reason ; and besides the 

 fact that sundry fish ramble about on land when impelled 

 to do so by the drying- up of the waters inhabited by them ; 

 there is the still more astounding fact, that one kind of fish 

 climbs trees. Few things seem more obviously impossible, 

 than that a water-breathing creature without efficient limbs&amp;gt; 

 should ascend eight or ten feet up the trunk of a palm ; and 

 yet the Anabas scandens does as much. To previous testi 

 monies on this point, Capt. Mitchell has recently added 

 others. Such remarkable cases of temporary changes of 

 media, will prepare us for conceiving how, under special con 

 ditions, permanent changes of media may have taken place ; 

 and for considering how the doctrine of evolution is eluci 

 dated by them. 



Both marine organisms and fresh- water organisms, are 

 many of them left from time to time partially or completely 

 without water ; and the creatures which show the power to 

 change their media temporarily or permanently, are in very 



