12 
NATURE STUDY. 
“A hideous great dog-fish, four feet long, came trotting 
after these sportsmen. This fish is very voracious, and often 
attacks men. Its flesh is hard and smells of musk. This 
case which holds my spectacles is made from the skin of 
that identical dog-fish, which I afterwards captured. The 
skin is called ‘shagreen,’ and as you see is of a green col¬ 
or and takes a high polish. 
“ Next came two very odd specimens. They had come 
from Australia and India to join the pageant in my honor. 
One was the lung-fish, which has not only gills, but a blad¬ 
der by which it breathes air, and makes a sound like the 
barking of a dog. The streams in which it lives are dry 
during a part of the year, 
and it then buries itself in 
the mud till awakened by 
the warm rains. It is six 
feet long, and sometimes 
crawls over marshy places 
by means of its gills. An¬ 
other kind of lung-fish en¬ 
velopes itself in a clay sack 
or cone during the dry sea- 
season. The other fish was 
the climbing perch, which, 
by the peculiar structure 
of some of the membranes 
of the head, retains water sufficient to keep the gills moist 
and so enables the fish to remain out of water for some time. 
It can climb banks and even trees, by means of strong mus¬ 
cles of the spines. 
“ Then appeared a company of artisans. A hammer¬ 
head fish, with its singular hammer shaped head, passed 
by me, his golden colored eyes in one end of the hammer 
became the color of flame, giving him a horrible appear¬ 
ance. Then a saw-fish, with its snout elongated into a flat, 
