464 Journ. of the Asiat. Soc. of Bengal. |Nov. & Dec., 1915. 
This group of cat-fishes has an accessory breathing apparatus 
that allows its members to live out of water for considerable 
eriods. Tristram has described a shoal of the Galileean 
species making its way up a stream so small that the fish were 
but imperfectly covered, and there can be no doubt that, like 
many fish common in the Oriental Region, C. macracanthus 
actually migrates on land through damp vegetation from 
one body of water to another. As early as the first century 
the Nile by an underground passage. It is perhaps the first 
reference to zoogeography in literature, and the only surprising 
thing about it is that though the conclusion was incorrec 
the premises were perfectly accurate. The cat-fish of the Lake 
Tiberias is identical with that of the lower Nile, but its 
peculiar habits and structure explain its occurrence in isolated 
basins without the necessity of imagining underground 
c annels. Possibly the species is not Ethiopian in origin at 
all, being Egyptian, i.e. Palaeartic: but the genus is mainly 
tropical. 
The Cichlidae as a family are even more remarkable 
for their powers of resistance than the Siluridae and there can 
be no doubt about the Ethiopian origin of the Jordanic species. 
A remarkable instance of the vigour of the family has 
recently been provided by one of the Indian species (Btroplus 
suratensis). This fish, commonly found both in fresh and in 
seine ie 
1 ; 
19165, Boulenger, Cat. Fresh-water Fishes Africa III, pp. 138, 308 (B. “ 
? Boulenger, Fishes of the N tle, p. 465 (1907). 
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