FISH OUT OF WATER 303 



not at all like the helpless fish out of water of popular 

 imagination, but as unconcernedly and naturally as if they 

 had been accustomed to the overland route for their whole 

 lifetimes, and were walking now on the king's highway 

 without let or hindrance. 



I took one up in my hand and examined it more care- 

 fully ; though the catching it wasn't by any means so easy 

 as it sounds on paper, for these perambulatory fish are 

 thoroughly inured to the dangers and difficulties of dry 

 land, and can get out of your way when you try to capture 

 them with a rapidity and dexterity which are truly sur- 

 prising. The little creatures are very pretty, well-formed 

 catfish, with bright, intelligent eyes, and a body armed all 

 over, like the armadillo's, with a continuous coat of hard 

 and horny mail. This coat is not formed of scales, as in 

 most fish, but of toughened skin, as in crocodiles and 

 alligators, arranged in two overlapping rows of imbricated 

 .shields, exactly like the round tiles so common on the 

 roofs of Italian cottages. The fish walks, or rather 

 shambles along ungracefully, by the shuffling movement 

 of a pair of stiff spines placed close behind his head, aided 

 by the steering action of his tail, and a constant snake-like 

 wriggling motion of his entire body. Leg spines of some- 

 what the same sort are found in the common English 

 gurnard, and in this age of Aquariums and Fisheries 

 Exhibitions, most adult persons above the age of twenty- 

 one years must have observed the gurnards themselves 

 crawling along suspiciously by their aid at the bottom of a 

 tank at the Crystal Palace or the polyonymous South 

 Kensington building. But while the European gurnard 

 only uses his substitutes for legs on the bed of the ocean, 

 my itinerant tropical acquaintance (his name, I regret to 

 say, is Callichthys) uses them boldly for terrestrial loco- 

 motion across the dry lowlands of his native country. 



