The "Missing Link" Among the Fishes 



It has lungs like a land animal and leg-like fins 



WHAT kind of a fish is this that the 

 American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory has received from Africa? To 

 be sure it's dead and older than Adam and 

 Eve. But look at it. It had perfect gills 

 and lived in the water when it could, 

 swimming about and enjoying 

 life to the utmost. But 

 when a home in the water 

 was not available on 

 account of the drying 

 up of the rivers at 

 certain times, it . 

 bored down into 

 the mud, wrapped 

 itself in a kind of 

 cocoon and lived 

 there, breathing 

 air through a per- 

 fectly good pair 

 of lungs until the 

 floods came and 

 washed it out. 



They call it the 

 "lung fish." Its 

 skin structure, its 

 skeleton and brain 

 so closely resem- 

 ble certain land 

 types that it is 

 conceded to be a 

 definite connect- 



ing link between the true fishes and the 

 four-footed land animals. It has two sets 

 of fins, which are so placed that they are 

 slightly suggestive of legs, especially the 

 hind ones. 



The American Museum's specimen of 

 the lung fish was found in a 

 clod of earth in which it 

 had encased itself in its 

 cocoon, a capsule of 

 papery texture formed 

 of hardened layers of 

 slime secreted by its* 

 body for the pur- 

 pose. At one point 



The summer home of the lung fish, into 

 which it burrowed while the earth was 

 still moist in the river bed. There it 

 had need for lungs until the floods came 



Photos American Museum 

 Natural History 



Above: Burrow- 

 ing deep into 

 the earth as the 

 hot, dry season 

 app r oached . 

 A breathing 

 hole was left 

 through which a 

 current of air 

 was obtained 



The active lung fish as it looked in water. Note the leg-like fins and the 

 breadth of the disappearing tail. Something similar is seen in the tadpole 



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