VITALITY OF FISHES. 49 



chance of being captured by man, we may probably 

 attribute their enormous and almost incredible size to 

 their great age. Several genera, like the Ophicephali and 

 eels, are so tenacious of life, that they are well known 

 to live under sufferings which, to other animals, would be 

 the most cruel torments; while others die almost the 

 minute they are taken out of water. Many fish show 

 their tenacity of life in other ways : some can not only 

 exist, but actually breed, in hot springs of various coun- 

 tries, whose temperatures vary from 80° to 120° Fahr. 

 But a statement by baron Humboldt, on this subject, is 

 still more surprising : he mentions, that during his 

 researches in Tropical America, he found fish thrown 

 up alive from the bottom of an exploding volcano, 

 along with water so hot as to raise the thermometer 

 to 210°, being two degrees only below boiling. Con- 

 sidering this excessive heat, it is, we think, too much to 

 suppose that the water in which these fish habitually 

 resided was always of such a temperature. It is a well- 

 known fact, that springs in the vicinity of volcanoes are 

 very often considerably heated hefore an eruption takes 

 place ; and until we are in possession of further evidence 

 on this point, we believe that such was the case in the 

 present instance : the internal fires, in all probability, had 

 greatly heated the water previous to its having been 

 expelled from its natural basin, before the increased 

 heat had killed the fishes ; a supposition much more 

 probable, it appears to us, than that fishes would live 

 and sport in a fluid whose temperature would be suffi- 

 cient to prepare them for the table. We have already 

 alluded to the singular faculty possessed by the Ophice- 

 phali, and some other fish, of crawling upon dry land, and 

 thus living in an element not their own : it is well known 

 that the tanks or isolated reservoirs of water in the East 

 Indies are often completely dried up during summer; 

 and yet, when they become again filled during the rainy 

 season, fish are also found in them. This singular fact 

 appears to be accounted for very satisfactorily by Mr, Yar- 

 rell : the impregnated ova (he observes) of the fish of one 



VOL. I. E 



