THE PIKE FAMILY. 229 



fish (Salarias alticus), also a native of Ceylon, which has the 

 faculty of partially ascending beaches and other steep places. 

 This species darts along the surface of the water, and by a 

 sort of wriggling motion of the body, with the assistance of 

 the pectoral fins and gill-covers, scuttles up the wet stones 

 with the utmost ease and rapidity, climbing the smooth 

 surfaces of the rocks in search of flies, and adhering so 

 closely as not to be detached by repeated shocks of the 

 waves. It even ascends the roots of the mangroves with 

 which the littoral of most parts of Ceylon is lined, and 

 exhibits such nimbleness that it is almost impossible to 

 lay hold of it, scrambling to the edge and plunging into 

 the sea upon the slightest attempt at molestation. 



The most extraordinary of all these performances is 

 that of the Perca scandens, or Climbing Perch, a native of 

 some parts of the East, which not only travels overland, 

 but actually ascends trees, in pursuit of the crustaceans 

 upon which it feeds, having been taken at an altitude of 

 many feet from the ground. The structure of this fish pecu- 

 liarly fits it for the exercise of this remarkable instinct. 

 Its gill-covers are armed with a number of spines, by 

 which, used as hands, it appears to suspend itself. Making 

 its tail a lever, and standing as it were on the little spines 

 of its anal fin, it endeavours to push itself upward through 

 the interstices of the bark by the expansion of its body, 

 closing at the same time its gill-covers that they may not 

 impede its progress; then, reaching a higher point, it 

 opens them again. Thus, and by bending the spiny rays 



