CoiuS. GANGETIC FISHES, 99 



seems to think the circumstance merely curious ; nor does he 

 appear to have any doubt concerning the fish possessing the 

 power of climbing trees. Nature, it is true, often gives facul- 

 ties to animals, by which they are led to actions highly danger- 

 ous and pernicious to themselves; and moralists, and other deal- 

 ers in trash, have therefore often declaimed against the ways of 

 Providence, without reflecting, that these same faculties enable 

 animals to procure the highest enjoyments of which their na- 

 tures are capable, To what enjoyment this dangerous faculty 

 of climbing trees could lead a wretched fish, I am totally at a 

 loss to imagine, and I therefore believe that Daldorf was mis- 

 taken ; but to what circumstance, neglected to be noticed in 

 his narrative, the error should be attributed, I cannot take upon 

 myself to say. The palm, as is often the case with those of its 

 species, (Borassus flabelliformus,) may have been growing with 

 its lower parts nearly horizontal, and the fish may have then 

 moved along it, as well as on the land : or the palm may have 

 been covered with the knobs, often left by the cultivators when 

 they remove the branches, (stipites,) and the fish may have 

 been left among these knobs by some bird, and might, no 

 doubt, have continued wriggling among them. 



Of all that I know, the cobojius is the fish most tenacious of 

 life in the air ; and I have known boatmen to keep them for 

 five or six days in an earthen pot without water, and daily to 

 use what they wanted, finding the fish as lively and fresh as 

 when caught. In fact, the Calcutta market is chiefly supplied 

 from extensive marshes in the Yasor district, and about one 

 hundred and fifty miles distant. From thence boat loads are 

 brought, and kept alive without water until sold. 



This is one of the fishes supposed to fall with rain from the 

 heavens ; and I endeavour to explain the circumstances giving 

 rise to this opinion, in the same manner as the similar suppo- 



