FROG-FISHES. 
177 
two or three days at a time. Like the Diodons^ 
I; which in some other particulars also they resem- 
: hie, they have the habit of inflating the body 
: by the inhalation of air until they are as round 
as a blown bladder ; this is supposed to be princi- 
pally done, when under the excitement of fear 
or anger. So tenacious of life are they that they 
' have been transported alive from the tropical 
seas to Holland, where they were sold as high 
as twelve ducats a-piece. 
MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes have, with much 
labour and skill, distinguished many species of 
; this genus formerly confounded in the Lophius 
: histrio of Bloch. The appropriateness of the 
: appellation histrio^ signifying a mountebank, for 
( these fishes^ has been misunderstood. It was 
I meant to allude, not to any fancied activity or 
I agility, a quality which they are very far from 
' possessing in general, but to the peculiarity of 
I their coloration, their hues, often diverse and 
strongly contrasted, being distributed in patches 
and irregular spots. 
Yet some of the species have a certain agility. 
In the great estuaries that indent the northern 
coast of Australia, from which the tide ebbs far 
back in the dry season, leaving them broad flats 
of mud, there is one of these so abundant, and 
capable of taking such vigorous leaps, that some 
voyagers have mistaken them, at first sight, for 
flocks of birds. 
It is doubtless an Antennarius^ and perhaps this 
very species, that is thus descril3ed by Mr. Earl, 
as observed on the coast of Borneo : Large 
I tracts of mud had been left uncovered by the 
I receding tide, and flocks of gulls and other birds 
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