216 



ZOOLOGY. 



[PART II. 



Eeferring to the Anabas scandens, Dr. Hamilton 

 Buchanan says, that of all the fish with which he was 

 acquainted it is the most tenacious of life; and he has 

 known boatmen on the Ganges to keep them for five or six 

 days in an earthen pot without water, and daily to use 

 what they wanted, finding them as lively and fresh as when 

 caught. 1 Two Danish naturalists residing at Tranquebar, 

 have contributed their authority to the fact of this fish 

 ascending trees on the coast of Coromandel, an exploit 

 from which it acquired its epithet of Perca scandens. 

 Daldorf, who was a lieutenant in the Danish East India 

 Company's service, communicated to Sir Joseph Banks, 

 that in the year 1791 he had taken this fish from a moist 

 cavity in the stem of a Palmyra palm, that grew near 

 a lake. He saw it when already five feet above the 

 ground struggling to ascend still higher ; " suspending 

 itself by its gill-covers, and bending its tail to the left, 

 it fixed its anal fin in the cavity of the bark, and sought 

 by expanding its body to urge its way upwards, and 

 its march was only arrested by the hand with which 

 he seized it." 2 



search of fresh pools. In one place 

 I saw hundreds diverging in every 

 direction, from the tank they had 

 just abandoned to a distance of fifty 

 or sixty yards, and etiU travelling 

 onwards. In going this distance, 

 however, they must have used mus- 

 cular exertion sufficient to have taken 

 them half a mile on level ground, for 

 at these places all the cattle and wild 

 animals of the neighbourhood had 

 latterly come to drink ; so that the 

 surface was everywhere indented 

 with -footmarks in addition to the 

 cracks in the surrounding baked mud, 

 into which the fish tumbled in their 

 progress. In those holes which were 

 deep and the sides perpendicular 

 they remained to die, and were 

 carried off by kites and crows." 



" My impression is that this migra- 

 tion takes place at night or before sun- 

 rise, for it was only early in the morn- 



ing that I have seen them progress- 

 ing, and I found that those I brought 

 away with me in chatties appeared 

 quiet by day, but a large proportion 

 managed to get out of the chatties 

 at night some escaped altogether, 

 others were trodden on and killed." 



" One peculiarity is the large size 

 of the vertebral column, quite dis- 

 proportioned to the bulk of the fish. 

 I particularly noticed that all in the 

 act of migrating had their gills ex- 



3 Fishes of tJie Ganges, 4to. 1822. 



2 Transactions Linn. Soc. vol. iii. 

 p. 63. It is remarkable, however, 

 that this discovery of Daldorf, which 

 excited so great an interest in 1791, 

 had been anticipated by an Arabian 

 voyager a thousand years before. 

 Abou-zeyd, the compiler of the re- 

 markable MS. known since Re- 

 naudot's translation by the title of 



