} 
THE CLIMBING PERCH. 477 
“. . . Asthe tanks dry up, the fish congregate in the little pools, till at last 
you find them in thousands in the moistest parts of the beds, rolling in the 
blue mud, which is at that t me about the consistence of thick gruel. 
‘As the moisture further evaporates, the surface fish are left uncovered, 
and they crawl away in search of fresh pools. In one place I saw hundreds 
diverging in every direction from the tank they had just abandoned, to a 
distance of fifty or sixty yards, and still travelling onwards. In going this 
distance, however, they must have used muscular exertion enough to have 
taken them half a mile on level ground, for at these places all the cattle and 
wild animals of the neighbourhood had latterly come to drink, so that the 
surface was everywhere indented with footmarks in addition to the cracks in 
the surrounding baked mud, into which the fish tumbled in their progress. 
CLIMBING PERCH.—(Axabas scandens.) 
1a those holes which were deep, and the sides perpendicular, they remained 
to die, and were carried off by kites and crows. 
“My impression is, that this migration must take place at night or before 
sunrise, for it was only early in the morning that I have seen them 
progressing, and I found that those I brought away with me in the chatties 
appeared quiet by day, but a large proportion managed to get out of the 
chatties by night—some escaped altogether, others were trodden on and killed. 
“One peculiarity is the large sizeof the vertebral column, quite dis- 
proportioned to the bulk of the fish. I particularly noticed that all in the 
act of migrating had their gills expanded.” 
It is known of the Climbing Perch that the fishermen of the Ganges, who 
subsist largely on these fishes, are accustomed to put them into an earthen 
pan or chatty as soon as caught ; and although no water is supplied to them, 
they exist very well without it, and live this strange life for five or six days. 
