80 



ANGLING. 



to the surface, for the purpose of breathing atmo- 

 spheric air. It is easy to suffocate a fish by keep- 

 ing it for a length of time beneath the surface, en- 

 closed in a gauze net. The gills of fishes, it has 

 been observed, possess complex powers, and are 

 capable of receiving the influence of oxygen, not 

 only from that portion of atmospheric air which is 

 mingled with the water, but also directly from the 

 atmosphere itself. The absorption of oxygen, how- 

 ever, in either way, is very .small in these aquatics ; 

 for it has been calculated that a human being con- 

 sumes fifty thousand times more than is required 

 by a tench. When fishes are deprived of water, 

 they perish not so much for want of oxygen, as 

 because their branchiae become dry, and their blood 

 no longer circulates with freedom. Hence the 

 species of which the branchial orifice is small, as 

 the eel, or those which possess receptacles for 

 moisture, like the so called climbing perch of M. 

 Daldorf, (Anabas scandens*), long survive expo- 

 sure ; while such as have their gills greatly cleft 

 and so exposed, expire almost instantly when with- 

 drawn from their moist abode, a philosophical fact 

 which has no doubt given rise to the familiar ex- 

 pression of " dead as a herring." 



Although fishes as a class, are properly regarded 

 as cold-blooded animals, yet Dr. John Davy has 

 shewn that the temperature of certain species allied 



* A curious eastern fish called in the Tamoul language, Paneiri, 

 or the tree climber, and alleged to ascend the trunks of trees by 

 means of the spiny processes of the gill-covers. See Linn. Trans. 

 in, 62. 



