LABYEINTHIFOEM PHARYNGEALS. 239 



live fossil fish has been published by Sir Wm. Jardine : 

 ' Fish, taken in the summer of 1835, on the shore of 

 Maearthy's Island, about three hundred and eighty miles 

 up the river Gambre, -were found about eighteen inches 

 below the surface of the ground, which during nine 

 months of the year is perfectly dry and hard, the re- 

 maining three months it is under water; when dug out 

 of the ground and put into water, the fish immediately 

 unfold themselves and commence swimming about. They 

 are dug up with sharp stakes and used for food.' We 

 hardly know what conclusions the reader may be disposed 

 to adopt from all this consentient testimony respecting 

 these subterranean fish : that men should dig up the 

 supposed exclusive denizens of the flood with pickaxe 

 and spade, is certainly not what one would, a priori, ex- 

 pect ; but, on the other hand, to doubt the existence of 

 anything merely because we have not seen or cannot 

 understand it, and to repudiate the force of very respec- 

 table evidence in the relation of mere matter of fact 

 (which, if it be not knowingly false, must needs be true), 

 is to carry scepticism rather too far. It recurs, too, to 

 us, as it will doubtless also to many of our readers, that 

 we have seen thousands of those little silvery fish, the 

 wriggle (ammodytes), hoed out of the sand at low water, 

 at a depth of several inches from the surface ; and in- 

 stances will probably be familiar to others of carp, eels, 

 perch, or tench, extracted alive from the consolidating 

 ooze of a waterless pond, or even discovered impacted in 

 the boggy bottom of a ditch.* If fish, then, may thus 



* Daniel, in his ' Eural Sports,' gives an interesting case in 

 poiat. ' A piece of water, wliicli liad been ordered to be flUed 

 up, and into which, wood and rubbish had been thrown for years, 

 was directed to be cleaned out. Persons were accordingly em- 

 ployed ; and, almost choked up by weeds and mud, so httle water 

 remained that no person expected to see any fish, except a few 

 eels ; yet nearly two hundred brace of tench of aU sizes, and as 



