THE DRAWING OF THE SEINE 149 



living gar tiiat I had ever seen. The fishermen 

 having departed, I was left in peace to pursue my 

 studies. 



Of diminutive cyprinoids, now dead and faded, there 

 were hundreds; and of the tougher toothed-minnows 

 nearly as many more. I was at once struck with the 

 great difference between these two families of fishes. 

 The slender, silvery cyprinoids made scarcely an effort 

 to escape, and, gasping a few times, were dying or dead. 

 Not so the blunt-head toothed-minnows or cyprinodonts. 

 Their gill-covers shut closely, and retained a supply of 

 water on their branchiag or breathing apparatus. They 

 lost no muscular power by exposure to the atmosphere, 

 and seemed to have so far a sense of direction that all 

 were making intelligent efforts to reach the open water. 

 I saw cyprinoids lying within a hand's breadth of water 

 into which they could have jumped with but little effort, 

 and yet they remained and died ; while the cyprinodonts, 

 often two and three yards distant, found their way to it, 

 and escaped. Their movements recalled what I had 

 read of the strange periophthalmus, a little fish found 

 in the Philippine Islands, which, leaving the water, 

 " skip along the strand with long leaps, evidently seek- 

 ing their food, which, besides insects, consists principally 

 of" onchidia, a genus of mollusca. I have never seen 

 these blunt-headed, hardy minnows leave the creek and 

 go insect-hunting, it is true, but the pluck and method 

 of the fish when removed from the water show very 

 clearly that but little experience and teaching need be 

 added to make them as hardy and active out of water 

 as their distant cousins of the Philippines. 



