1880.] Do Flying Fish Fly ? 645 
servation enables one to see that the wing-like pectoral fins of 
the flying fish are capable of a vibrating movement, like the 
wings of a grasshopper.” 
Dr. Kneeland! makes the following noteworthy statements as 
the result of observations made in 1870, on a voyage from San 
Francisco to Panama: “The ventrals were expanded like the 
pectorals in the act of flight. They rose out of a perfectly 
smooth sea, showing that they are not mere skippers from the top 
of one wave to another; they could be seen to change their 
course as well as to rise and fall, not unfrequently touching the 
longer, lower lobe of the tail to the surface, and again rising, as 
if they used the tail as a powerful spring. While the ventrals 
may have acted chiefly as a parachute, it seemed that the pec- 
torals performed, by their almost imperceptible but rapid vibra- 
tions, the function of true flight.” 
To the same effect speaks A. v. Humboldt? when he says, “ Not- 
withstanding the astonishing swiftness of their movement, one 
can convince oneself that the animal beats the air during its 
Spring, 2. e., that it alternately opens and closes its pectoral fins.” 
In his work “On the Origin of Species” (p. 175), the great 
naturalist remarks: “It is conceivable that flying fish, which 
now glide far through the air, slightly rising and turning by the 
aid of their fluttering fins, might have been modified into perfectly 
Winged animals. If this had been effected, who would have ever 
imagined that in an early transitional state -they had been the 
inhabitants of the open ocean, and had used their incipient organs 
of flight exclusively, as far as we know, to escape being devoured 
by other fish >” 
Without attempting to make this bibliographic sketch exhaus- 
tive—an infeasible undertaking with the libraries at my command > 
—I will now pass to my own observations on the flight of flying 
fish, made during a voyage from San Francisco to Yokohama, on 
the steamer City of Peking, reserving till the last the considera- 
tion of the recent elaborate paper of Prof. Carl Möbius? 
Of the nearly twenty-three days that elapsed between depar- 
ture and arrival (Aug. 1 to Aug. 24, 1879), at least ten were 
favorable for the study of the question under consideration. 
1 Proceed. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. xv, p. 138, 1872. i 
* Reise in die Aequinoctial-Gegenden des neuen Continents,” 1, Stuttgart, 1815. 
"Di Bewegungen der fliegenden Fische durch die Luft.” Zeitschrift für Wis- 
senschaftliche Zoologie, Supplement to Vol. xxx, p. 343, 1878. 
