CHAPTER XLIV 



ORDER OF THE CONNECTING-LINK FISHES, WITH 



LUNGS AND LEGS 



SIRENOIDEI 



As in the preceding sections of this work, we 

 will begin our studies of the Class of Fishes with 

 the highest forms, and run down in regular course 

 to the lowest. Of the 144 Families composing 

 this class, as it occurs in North America, it is 

 impossible to mention separately more than a 



congeners lie embedded in Jurassic rocks 500,000 

 years old; and how this poor orphan of the Past 

 escaped with its life down to the Present, many 

 have wondered, but nobody knows. As you 

 stand before the glass tank in the end of the 

 Reptile House of the London Zoo, and behold a 



THE AUSTRALIAN LUNG-FISH. 



very few of those which are of greatest im- 

 portance. 



The Lung-Fishes are introduced because 

 they are the highest of all the fishes, and form 

 the connecting link between that class and the 

 amphibians. Of the three genera that are known, 

 one is found in Australia, two in Africa, one in 

 South America, and in North America, none. 



To some ichthyologists, the great Australian 

 Lung-Fish 1 is the most interesting of all fishes. 

 It is not only an intermediate form between the 

 amphibians and fishes of to-day, but it is a creat- 

 ure that has far outlived its natural fate. Its 

 1 C'e-rat'o-dus fors'ter-i. 



magnificent living Ceratodus four feet long, with 

 an ancestry running back half a million years 

 without a break, it makes one's brain whirl to 

 reel in the idea. This creature's ancestors lived 

 in the days when many fishes were struggling 

 to develop legs and lungs, with which to go on 

 land, and become salamanders first, then lizards. 

 It is said that this fish sometimes leaves the water 

 and goes about on adjacent mud-flats, like the 

 jumping fish of the Malay Peninsula; but the 

 statement needs confirmation. 



The Australian Lung-Fish is from 4 to 5 feet 

 long, and it is said that its maximum weight is 

 about 20 pounds. It breathes air over its palate 



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