288 Fish Stories 



women, and all the monkey people. But it was very long 

 ago when this happened, and because these ancestors came 

 finally out of the water they have no part in the story I am 

 trying to tell here. 



Those that remained in the water grew more and more 

 contented with their condition. Because the medium in 

 which they lived was as heavy as their bodies, they swam 

 without much effort, and effort not being needed, they could 

 give their attention to moving back and forth. As there 

 was food enough in the water, they did not need to go on 

 land. As they did not go on land, they did not use their 

 lungs for breathing, the air sac gradually shrank away, or 

 was used for some other purpose, and all the parts of the 

 body became adjusted for life in water, as those of their 

 cousins who left the sea became fitted for the life in air. 

 Being now fishes for good, all the progress since then has 

 made them with each succeeding century more and more 

 decidedly fishy. 



And because they are fishes some of them are contented 

 to live in little brooks, which would not satisfy you and me 

 at all. But our ancestors in the early days were more am- 

 bitious, and by struggle and effort won what seems to us a 

 larger heritage. 



So it happened one spring when the ice melted out from 

 some little brook that flows down from somebody's hills 

 somewhere toward some river that sets toward the Mississ- 

 ippi, the little fishes began to run. 



And first of all came the lampreys, but they hardly count 

 as fishes, for they have yet to learn the first principles of 

 fishiness. A fish is a creature whose arms and legs are 

 developed as fins, having cartilaginous rays spreading out 

 fan-like to form an oar for swimming. But the lamprey- 

 has no trace of arm or leg, not even a bone or cartilage 

 hidden under the skin. And its ancestors never had any 

 limbs at all, for the earliest lamprey embryo shows no 

 traces of them. If the ancestors ever had limbs, the de- 



