a a 8 Pa a PPS Pi a a 6 Oh oh a a a IS aes 
49 
a sos 
0 Oi SPS Oa PS Pa Ps 9 6 Oe SO 4 9 OS 9 6 Pe aS 
Climbing Perch 
& 
oa 6s OS 
Back in 1900, before there had been 
any extensive importations of exotic 
fishes, | made the acquaintance of Ana- 
bas scandens, the Climbing Perch. Our 
introduction took place in the store of 
Fred Kaempfer, Chicago’s leading pet- 
stock dealer. The fish had been sent to 
Chicago by Otto Eggling, of New York 
City. Eggling had a Lascar sailor on a 
British tramp steamer plying between 
Calcutta and New York, who brought 
“muchli” (fishes) with him. 
The Climbing Perch, and incidentally 
it is not a perch, was known and com- 
mented upon by travelers more than a 
hundred years before I possessed a pair. 
Lieutenant Daldorf, of the Danish navy, 
mentions, in his memoirs of 1797, that he 
captured it in the act of climbing a tree. 
e 
CLIMBING PERCH 
WALTER LANNOY BRIND, F. Z. S. 
F 
Th 
Sa Ss St 
SS OS OS Os Ot Pe a Ps as Oa 
(Anabas scandens) 
% 
He found it with the spiny margin of the 
gill-covers hooked into the interstices of 
the bark, and watched while it curled its 
tail around, thrust its pectoral fins for- 
ward and pushed ahead. The opercula 
are remarkably mobile and may be moved 
outward almost at right angles to the 
body, and the mere closing, if in contact 
with an object, is sufficient to pull an 
average fish forward half an inch. The 
movements described by Lieutenant Dal- 
dorf exactly correspond to those I have 
obesrved when placing this fish on the 
ground and out of water. In the instance 
described by the naval officer it seems to 
me quite possible that a fallen trunk of 
a tree, partly submerged, in a pond in 
process of drying up, as so often happens 
in India, had afforded the fish an easy 
