CHAPTER XLIV 
ORDER OF THE CONNECTING-LINK FISHES, WITH 
LUNGS AND LEGS 
•S' I R E NO ID El 
As in the preceding sections of this work, we 
will begin our studies of the Class of Fishes with 
the highest forms, and run down in regular course 
to the lowest. Of the 144 Families composing 
this class, as it occurs in North America, it is 
impossible to mention separately more than a 
congeners lie embedded in Jurassic rocks 500,000 
years old ; and how this poor orphan of the Past 
escaped with its life down to the Present, many 
have wondered, but nobody knows. As you 
stand before the glass tank in the end of the 
Reptile House of the London Zoo, and behold a 
THE AUSTRALIAN LUNG-FISH. 
very few of those which are of greatest im- 
portance. 
The Lung-Fishes are introduced because 
they are the highest of all the fishes, and form 
the connecting link between that class and the 
amphibians. Of the three genera that are known, 
one is found in Australia, two in Africa, one in 
South America, and in North America, none. 
To some ichthyologists, the great Australian 
Lung-Fish 1 is the most interesting of all fishes. 
It is not only an intermediate form between the 
amphibians and fishes of to-day, but it is a creat - 
ure that has far outlived its natural fate. Its 
1 Ce-rat'o-dus fors'ter-i. 
magnificent living Ceratodus four feet long, with 
an ancestry running back half a million years 
without a break, it makes one’s brain whirl to 
reel in the idea. This creature’s ancestors lived 
in the days when many fishes were struggling 
to develop legs and lungs, with which to go on 
land, and become salamanders first, then lizards. 
It is said that this fish sometimes leaves the water 
and goes about on adjacent mud-flats, like the 
jumping fish of the Malay Peninsula;, but the 
statement needs confirmation. 
The Australian Lung-Fish is from 4 to 5 feet 
long, and it is said that its maximum weight is 
about 20 pounds. It breathes air over its palate 
380 
