3854 The Zoologist — February, 1874. 



I have written this paper in the hope that it may do good 

 practical service in obtaining for our Crystal Palace Aquarinm 

 many marine animals from the splendid aquarium now being 

 constructed, with my help, at Naples ; and 1 trust that Dr. Anton 

 Dohrn, its owner, will soon send us many more animals (in the 

 moist way), in addition to those which — aided by the kindness 

 of shipowners, captains and crews — we have already received 

 from him in water. Dr. Dohrn might re-commence with Medi- 

 terranean sea-anemones and crabs, as I believe many of them 

 will survive the overland journey by using care and avoiding 

 large packages. Several packages made up into one is the 

 right plan ; and for anemones and some other animals, baskets 

 like our shrimp-baskets, lied six in one, would do very well, 

 I think. 



Osphromenus is an oriental fish (Indian, I believe), of which more 

 than one has been brought alive to, and kept at, the Regent's Park 

 Zoological Gardens. I do not know the circumstances of its trans- 

 mission, nor anything of its habits in England; but, as it belongs 

 to the same family as the "climbing perch" (Anabas scnnde/is), 

 I think that, most likely, like the latter fish, its anatomy permits its 

 occasionally living for considerable periods when not actually 

 immersed in water, and of thus being easily sent to long dis- 

 tances. Anabas is provided with an arrangement enabling it to 

 retain a quantity of water for the use of its gills when it is on 

 dry land. 



There is another creature (Protopterus or Lepidosiren) which, if 

 a fish, is very closely allied to reptiles, but which in an aquarium 

 is fish-like in ils habit of remaining always below the surface of 

 water, and which, if it had to be brought from its home in Africa 

 immersed in a bulk of water, its transport would be so diflicult that 

 we should never see it alive in England. But it has been brought 

 in a living state to Britain and to Germany, several times, because 

 in its native haunts it lives in ponds liable to be dried by the sun, 

 and then the creature rolls itself up into a compact ball of mud 

 (hence it is called the " mud-fish"), which becomes hard and dry, 

 yet containing the very small quantity of moisture and oxygen neces- 

 sary for the animal's almost suspended animation and exceedingly 

 slow breathing, and in this way, the means of oxygenating its gills 

 being readily conveyed about with it, the animal can be sent from 

 one continent to another, easily. On obtaining it, I have gently 



