A NEW GENUS OF GANOID FISH. 459 



the eel-like fish he had sent me, and requested him, if possible, to forward perfect 

 specimens, so that its specific or generic differences might be determined and de- 

 scribed ; at the same time, I asked him to give me what information he might be 

 able to gather as to its natural history. Since that time, accordingly, I have had 

 letters from Old Calabar, and more recently, the perfect specimens of the fish 

 now exhibited. Mr Robb writes from Creek Town, Old Calabar, that the fish 

 is well known there, being occasionally sold in the markets, and eaten by 

 the natives, though not by the most refined. It attains a considerable size, 

 and is an inhabitant of the fresh waters of their brown, mud-laden rivers 

 and creeks, through which, however, the tide flows for a great distance above 

 Creek Town, where, indeed, at high water it rises to a height of seven feet, 

 although Creek Town is some forty or fifty miles from the bar, at the mouth 

 of the great river. The fish is essentially, Mr Eobb says, a mud fish, and 

 he considers it strange that he cannot get it in the dry season. It is caught 

 during the rains, which last there from the beginning of June to the end of 

 September. The fish is then to be found in the little fresh-water streamlets that 

 run into the main rivers or creeks, and also in the pools in the marshy lands or 

 mimbo swamps, as they are designated, from a kind of palm wine, or mimbo, 

 made from some of the species of palm — the mimbo palms — which grow abun- 

 dantly in such localities. The fish is most commonly found where the roots of 

 the trees interlace together, and rise out of the water, leaving thus spaces below, 

 through which the stream rises and falls with the ebb and flow of the tide. 

 From the fact of the fish being only found at the season of the rains, it is 

 not unlikely that they come at that time from the deeper parts of the river, 

 to spawn in the shallows and streamlets ; and this is also somewhat confirmed 

 by the fact of the ova being abundant, and of considerable size, in some of 

 the female specimens sent to me, which were opened for examination. The 

 Rev. Mr Robb states that the fish sent are good specimens ; two of them were 

 brought to him alive in the fish-traps in which they were taken. This trap is a 

 wicker basket, with an entrance made tapering inwards, like a funnel, so that if 

 the fish once goes in, it cannot get out again. The traps are generally baited with a 

 few palm nuts, and then sunk in the water. The natives have, however, many 

 different ways of catching fish. Mr Robb kept the fish, thus caught, alive in water 

 for several days, and noticed the snake-like agility and force of their movements. 



Native name. — The fish is named by the natives u-nyang, the literal mean- 

 ing of which Mr Robb does not know, unless it may signify the struggler, or, to 

 use a Scottish word as more descriptive of this supposed meaning— the " wambler:'' 

 Nyang-a is a native verb signifying to struggle for a thing, as when two persons 

 desire possession of one object ; while u-nyang-a is a scuffling or struggling for the 

 possession of a thing. The name of the fish u-nyang appears therefore to be a 

 shortened form of the verbal noun ; and was probably suggested by the twisting. 



