FISH OUT OF WATER

Strolling one day in what is euphemistically termed, in equatorial

latitudes, 'the cool of the evening,' along a tangled tropical American

field-path, through a low region of lagoons and watercourses, my

attention happened to be momentarily attracted from the monotonous

pursuit of the nimble mosquito by a small animal scuttling along

irregularly before me, as if in a great hurry to get out of my way

before I could turn him into an excellent specimen. At first sight I

took the little hopper, in the grey dusk, for one of the common, small

green lizards, and wasn't much disposed to pay it any distinguished

share either of personal or scientific attention. But as I walked on a

little further through the dense underbrush, more and more of these

shuffling and scurrying little creatures kept crossing the path,

hastily, all in one direction, and all, as it were, in a formed body or

marching phalanx. Looking closer, to my great surprise, I found they

were actually fish out of water, going on a walking tour, for change of

air, to a new residence--genuine fish, a couple of inches long each, not

eel-shaped or serpentine in outline, but closely resembling a red mullet

in miniature, though much more beautifully and delicately coloured, and

with fins and tails of the most orthodox spiny and prickly description.

They were travelling across country in a bee-line, thousands of them

together, not at all like the helpless fish out of water of popular

imagination, but as unconcernedly and naturally as if they had been

accustomed to the overland route for their whole lifetimes, and were

walking now on the king's highway without let or hindrance.

I took one up in my hand and examined it more carefully; though the

catching it wasn't by any means so easy as it sounds on paper, for these

perambulatory fish are thoroughly inured to the dangers and difficulties

of dry land, and can get out of your way when you try to capture them

with a rapidity and dexterity which are truly surprising. The little

creatures are very pretty, well-formed catfish, with bright, intelligent

eyes, and a body armed all over, like the armadillo's, with a continuous

coat of hard and horny mail. This coat is not formed of scales, as in

most fish, but of toughened skin, as in crocodiles and alligators,

arranged in two overlapping rows of imbricated shields, exactly like the

round tiles so common on the roofs of Italian cottages. The fish walks,

or rather shambles along ungracefully, by the shuffling movement of a

pair of stiff spines placed close behind his head, aided by the steering

action of his tail, and a constant snake-like wriggling motion of his

entire body. Leg spines of somewhat the same sort are found in the

common English gurnard, and in this age of Aquariums and Fisheries

Exhibitions, most adult persons above the age of twenty-one years must

have observed the gurnards themselves crawling along suspiciously by

their aid at the bottom of a tank at the Crystal Palace or the

polyonymous South Kensington building. But while the European gurnard

only uses his substitutes for legs on the bed of the ocean, my itinerant

tropical acquaintance (his name, I regret to say, is Callichthys) uses

them boldly for terrestrial locomotion across the dry lowlands of his

native country. And while the gurnard has no less than six of these

pro-legs, the American land fish has only a single pair with which to

accomplish his arduous journeys. If this be considered as a point of

inferiority in the armour-plated American species, we must remember that

while beetles and grasshoppers have as many as six legs apiece, man, the

head and crown of things, is content to scramble through life

ungracefully with no more than two.

There are a great many tropical American pond-fish which share these

adventurous gipsy habits of the pretty little Callichthys. Though they

belong to two distinct groups, otherwise unconnected, the circumstances

of the country they inhabit have induced in both families this queer

fashion of waddling out courageously on dry land, and going on voyages

of exploration in search of fresh ponds and shallows new, somewhere in

the neighbourhood of their late residence. One kind in particular, the

Brazilian Doras, takes land journeys of such surprising length, that he

often spends several nights on the way, and the Indians who meet the

wandering bands during their migrations fill several baskets full of the

prey thus dropped upon them, as it were, from the kindly clouds.

Both Doras and Callichthys, too, are well provided with means of defence

against the enemies they may chance to meet during their terrestrial

excursions; for in both kinds there are the same bony shields along the

sides, securing the little travellers, as far as possible, from attack

on the part of hungry piscivorous animals. Doras further utilises its

powers of living out of water by going ashore to fetch dry leaves, with

which it builds itself a regular nest, like a bird's, at the beginning

of the rainy season. In this nest the affectionate parents carefully

cover up their eggs, the hope of the race, and watch over them with the

utmost attention. Many other fish build nests in the water, of

materials naturally found at the bottom; but Doras, I believe, is the

only one that builds them on the beach, of materials sought for on the

dry land.

Such amphibious habits on the part of certain tropical fish are easy

enough to explain by the fashionable clue of 'adaptation to

environment.' Ponds are always very likely to dry up, and so the animals

that frequent ponds are usually capable of bearing a very long

deprivation of water. Indeed, our evolutionists generally hold that land

animals have in every case sprung from pond animals which have gradually

adapted themselves to do without water altogether. Life, according to

this theory, began in the ocean, spread up the estuaries into the

greater rivers, thence extended to the brooks and lakes, and finally

migrated to the ponds, puddles, swamps and marshes, whence it took at

last, by tentative degrees, to the solid shore, the plains, and the

mountains. Certainly the tenacity of life shown by pond animals is very

remarkable. Our own English carp bury themselves deeply in the mud in

winter, and there remain in a dormant condition many months entirely

without food. During this long hibernating period, they can be preserved

alive for a considerable time out of water, especially if their gills

are, from time to time, slightly moistened. They may then be sent to any

address by parcels post, packed in wet moss, without serious damage to

their constitution; though, according to Dr. Günther, these dissipated

products of civilisation prefer to have a piece of bread steeped in

brandy put into their mouths to sustain them beforehand. In Holland,

where the carp are not so sophisticated, they are often kept the whole

winter through, hung up in a net to keep them from freezing. At first

they require to be slightly wetted from time to time, just to

acclimatise them gradually to so dry an existence; but after a while

they adapt themselves cheerfully to their altered circumstances, and

feed on an occasional frugal meal of bread and milk with Christian

resignation.

Of all land-frequenting fish, however, by far the most famous is the

so-called climbing perch of India, which not only walks bodily out of

the water, but even climbs trees by means of special spines, near the

head and tail, so arranged as to stick into the bark and enable it to

wriggle its way up awkwardly, something after the same fashion as the

'looping' of caterpillars. The tree-climber is a small scaly fish,

seldom more than seven inches long; but it has developed a special

breathing apparatus to enable it to keep up the stock of oxygen on its

terrestrial excursions, which may be regarded as to some extent the

exact converse of the means employed by divers to supply themselves with

air under water. Just above the gills, which form of course its natural

hereditary breathing apparatus, the climbing perch has invented a new

and wholly original water chamber, containing within it a frilled bony

organ, which enables it to extract oxygen from the stored-up water

during the course of its aërial peregrinations. While on shore it picks

up small insects, worms, and grubs; but it also has vegetarian tastes of

its own, and does not despise fruits and berries. The Indian jugglers

tame the climbing perches and carry them about with them as part of

their stock in trade; their ability to live for a long time out of water

makes them useful confederates in many small tricks which seem very

wonderful to people accustomed to believe that fish die almost at once

when taken out of their native element.

The Indian snakehead is a closely allied species, common in the shallow

ponds and fresh-water tanks of India, where holy Brahmans bathe and

drink and die and are buried, and most of which dry up entirely during

the dry season. The snakehead, therefore, has similarly accommodated

himself to this annual peculiarity in his local habitation by acquiring

a special chamber for retaining water to moisten his gills throughout

his long deprivation of that prime necessary. He lives composedly in

semi-fluid mud, or lies torpid in the hard baked clay at the bottom of

the dry tank from which all the water has utterly evaporated in the

drought of summer. As long as the mud remains soft enough to allow the

fish to rise slowly through it, they come to the surface every now and

then to take in a good hearty gulp of air, exactly as gold fish do in

England when confined with thoughtless or ignorant cruelty in a glass

globe too small to provide sufficient oxygen for their respiration. But

when the mud hardens entirely they hibernate or rather æstivate, in a

dormant condition, until the bursting of the monsoon fills the ponds

once more with the welcome water. Even in the perfectly dry state,

however, they probably manage to get a little air every now and again

through the numerous chinks and fissures in the sun-baked mud. Our Aryan

brother then goes a-fishing playfully with a spade and bucket, and digs

the snakehead in this mean fashion out of his comfortable lair, with an

ultimate view to the manufacture of pillau. In Burmah, indeed, while the

mud is still soft, the ingenious Burmese catch the helpless creatures by

a still meaner and more unsportsmanlike device. They spread a large

cloth over the slimy ooze where the snakeheads lie buried, and so cut

off entirely for the moment their supply of oxygen. The poor fish,

half-asphyxiated by this unkind treatment, come up gasping to the

surface under the cloth in search of fresh air, and are then easily

caught with the hand and tossed into baskets by the degenerate

Buddhists.

Old Anglo-Indians even say that some of these mud haunting Oriental

fish will survive for many years in a state of suspended animation, and

that when ponds or jhíls which are known to have been dry for several

successive seasons are suddenly filled by heavy rains, they are found to

be swarming at once with full-grown snakeheads released in a moment from

what I may venture to call their living tomb in the hardened bottom.

Whether such statements are absolutely true or not the present deponent

would be loth to decide dogmatically; but, if we were implicitly to

swallow everything that the old Anglo-Indian in his simplicity assures

us he has seen--well, the clergy would have no further cause any longer

to deplore the growing scepticism and unbelief of these latter

unfaithful ages.

This habit of lying in the mud and there becoming torpid may be looked

upon as a natural alternative to the habit of migrating across country,

when your pond dries up, in search of larger and more permanent sheets

of water. Some fish solve the problem how to get through the dry season

in one of these two alternative fashions and some in the other. In flat

countries where small ponds and tanks alone exist, the burying plan is

almost universal; in plains traversed by large rivers or containing

considerable scattered lakes, the migratory system finds greater favour

with the piscine population.

One tropical species which adopts the tactics of hiding itself in the

hard clay, the African mud-fish, is specially interesting to us human

beings on two accounts--first, because, unlike almost all other kinds of

fish, it possesses lungs as well as gills; and, secondly, because it

forms an intermediate link between the true fish and the frogs or

amphibians, and therefore stands in all probability in the direct line

of human descent, being the living representative of one among our own

remote and early ancestors. Scientific interest and filial piety ought

alike to secure our attention for the African mud-fish. It lives its

amphibious life among the rice-fields on the Nile, the Zambesi, and the

Gambia, and is so greatly given to a terrestrial existence that its

swim-bladder has become porous and cellular, so as to be modified into a

pair of true and serviceable lungs. In fact, the lungs themselves in all

the higher animals are merely the swim-bladders of fish, slightly

altered so as to perform a new but closely allied office. The mud-fish

is common enough in all the larger English aquariums, owing to a

convenient habit in which it indulges, and which permits it to be

readily conveyed to all parts of the globe on the same principle as the

vans for furniture. When the dry season comes on and the rice-fields are

reduced to banks of baking mud, the mud-fish retire to the bottom of

their pools, where they form for themselves a sort of cocoon of hardened

clay, lined with mucus, and with a hole at each end to admit the air;

and in this snug retreat they remain torpid till the return of wet

weather. As the fish usually reach a length of three or four feet, the

cocoons are of course by no means easy to transport entire. Nevertheless

the natives manage to dig them up whole, fish and all; and if the

capsules are not broken, the unconscious inmates can be sent across by

steamer to Europe with perfect safety. Their astonishment when they

finally wake up after their long slumber, and find themselves inspecting

the British public, as introduced to them by Mr. Farini, through a sheet

of plate-glass, must be profound and interesting.

In England itself, on the other hand, we have at least one kind of fish

which exemplifies the opposite or migratory solution of the dry pond

problem, and that is our familiar friend the common eel. The ways of

eels are indeed mysterious, for nobody has ever yet succeeded in

discovering where, when, or how they manage to spawn; nobody has ever

yet seen an eel's egg, or caught a female eel in the spawning condition,

or even observed a really adult male or female specimen of perfect

development. All the eels ever found in fresh water are immature and

undeveloped creatures. But eels do certainly spawn somewhere or other in

the deep sea, and every year, in the course of the summer, flocks of

young ones, known as elvers, ascend the rivers in enormous quantities,

like a vast army under numberless leaders. At each tributary or

affluent, be it river, brook, stream, or ditch, a proportionate

detachment of the main body is given off to explore the various

branches, while the central force wriggles its way up the chief channel,

regardless of obstacles, with undiminished vigour. When the young elvers

come to a weir, a wall, a floodgate, or a lasher, they simply squirm

their way up the perpendicular barrier with indescribable wrigglings, as

if they were wholly unacquainted, physically as well as mentally, with

Newton's magnificent discovery of gravitation. Nothing stops them; they

go wherever water is to be found; and though millions perish hopelessly

in the attempt, millions more survive in the end to attain their goal in

the upper reaches. They even seem to scent ponds or lakes mysteriously,

at a distance, and will strike boldly straight across country, to sheets

of water wholly cut off from communication with the river which forms

their chief highway.

The full-grown eels are also given to journeying across country in a

more sober, sedate, and dignified manner, as becomes fish which have

fully arrived at years, or rather months, of discretion. When the ponds

in which they live dry up in summer, they make in a bee-line for the

nearest sheet of fresh water, whose direction and distance they appear

to know intuitively, through some strange instinctive geographical

faculty. On their way across country, they do not despise the succulent

rat, whom they swallow whole when caught with great gusto. To keep their

gills wet during these excursions, eels have the power of distending the

skin on each side of the neck, just below the head, so as to form a big

pouch or swelling. This pouch they fill with water, to carry a good

supply along with them, until they reach the ponds for which they are

making. It is the pouch alone that enables eels to live so long out of

water under all circumstances, and so incidentally exposes them to the

disagreeable experience of getting skinned alive, which it is to be

feared still forms the fate of most of those that fall into the clutches

of the human species.

A far more singular walking fish than any of these is the odd creature

that rejoices (unfortunately) in the very classical surname of

Periophthalmus, which is, being interpreted, Stare-about. (If he had a

recognised English name of his own, I would gladly give it; but as he

hasn't, and as it is clearly necessary to call him something, I fear we

must stick to the somewhat alarming scientific nomenclature.)

Periophthalmus, then, is an odd fish of the tropical Pacific shores,

with a pair of very distinct forelegs (theoretically described as

modified pectoral fins), and with two goggle eyes, which he can protrude

at pleasure right outside the sockets, so as to look in whatever

direction he chooses, without even taking the trouble to turn his head

to left or right, backward or forward. At ebb tide this singular

peripatetic goby literally walks straight out of the water, and

promenades the bare beach erect on two legs, in search of small crabs

and other stray marine animals left behind by the receding waters. If

you try to catch him, he hops away briskly much like a frog, and stares

back at you grimly over his left shoulder, with his squinting optics.

So completely adapted is he for this amphibious long-shore existence,

that his big eyes, unlike those of most other fish, are formed for

seeing in the air as well as in the water. Nothing can be more ludicrous

than to watch him suddenly thrusting these very movable orbs right out

of their sockets like a pair of telescopes, and twisting them round in

all directions so as to see in front, behind, on top, and below, in one

delightful circular sweep.

There is also a certain curious tropical American carp which, though it

hardly deserves to be considered in the strictest sense as a fish out of

water, yet manages to fall nearly half-way under that peculiar category,

for it always swims with its head partly above the surface and partly

below. But the funniest thing in this queer arrangement is the fact that

one half of each eye is out in the air and the other half is beneath in

the water. Accordingly, the eye is divided horizontally by a dark strip

into two distinct and unlike portions, the upper one of which has a

pupil adapted to vision in the air alone, while the lower is adapted to

seeing in the water only. The fish, in fact, always swims with its eye

half out of the water, and it can see as well on dry land as in its

native ocean. Its name is Anableps, but in all probability it does not

wish the fact to be generally known.

The flying fish are fish out of water in a somewhat different and more

transitory sense. Their aërial excursions are brief and rapid; they can

only fly a very little way, and have soon to take once more for safety

to their own more natural and permanent element. More than forty kinds

of the family are known, in appearance very much like English herrings,

but with the front fins expanded and modified into veritable wings. It

is fashionable nowadays among naturalists to assert that the flying fish

don't fly; that they merely jump horizontally out of the water with a

powerful impulse, and fall again as soon as the force of the first

impetus is entirely spent. When men endeavour to persuade you to such

folly, believe them not. For my own part, I have _seen_ the flying fish

fly--deliberately fly, and flutter, and rise again, and change the

direction of their flight in mid-air, exactly after the fashion of a big

dragonfly. If the other people who have watched them haven't succeeded

in seeing them fly, that is their own fault, or at least their own

misfortune; perhaps their eyes weren't quick enough to catch the rapid,

though to me perfectly recognisable, hovering and fluttering of the

gauze-like wings; but I have seen them myself, and I maintain that on

such a question one piece of positive evidence is a great deal better

than a hundred negative. The testimony of all the witnesses who didn't

see the murder committed is as nothing compared with the single

testimony of the one man who really did see it. And in this case I have

met with many other quick observers who fully agreed with me, against

the weight of scientific opinion, that they have seen the flying fish

really fly with their own eyes, and no mistake about it. The German

professors, indeed, all think otherwise; but then the German professors

all wear green spectacles, which are the outward and visible sign of

'blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.' The unsophisticated

vision of the noble British seaman is unanimously with me on the matter

of the reality of the fishes' flight.

Another group of very interesting fish out of water are the flying

gurnards, common enough in the Mediterranean and the tropical Atlantic.

They are much heavier and bigger creatures than the true flying fish of

the herring type, being often a foot and a half long, and their wings

are much larger in proportion, though not, I think, really so powerful

as those of their pretty little silvery rivals. All the flying fish fly

only of necessity, not from choice. They leave the water when pursued

by their enemies, or when frightened by the rapid approach of a big

steamer. So swiftly do they fly, however, that they can far outstrip a

ship going at the rate of ten knots an hour; and I have often watched

one keep ahead of a great Pacific liner under full steam for many

minutes together in quick successive flights of three or four hundred

feet each. Oddly enough, they can fly further against the wind than

before it--a fact acknowledged even by the spectacled Germans

themselves, and very hard indeed to reconcile with the orthodox belief

that they are not flying at all, but only jumping. I don't know whether

the flying gurnards are good eating or not; but the silvery flying fish

are caught for market (sad desecration of the poetry of nature!) in the

Windward Islands, and when nicely fried in egg and bread-crumb are

really quite as good for practical purposes as smelts or whiting or any

other prosaic European substitute.

On the whole, it will be clear, I think, to the impartial reader from

this rapid survey that the helplessness and awkwardness of a fish out of

water has been much exaggerated by the thoughtless generalisation of

unscientific humanity. Granting, for argument's sake, that most fish

prefer the water, as a matter of abstract predilection, to the dry land,

it must be admitted _per contra_ that many fish cut a much better figure

on terra firma than most of their critics themselves would cut in

mid-ocean. There are fish that wriggle across country intrepidly with

the dexterity and agility of the most accomplished snakes; there are

fish that walk about on open sand-banks, semi-erect on two legs, as

easily as lizards; there are fish that hop and skip on tail and fins in

a manner that the celebrated jumping frog himself might have observed

with envy; and there are fish that fly through the air of heaven with a

grace and swiftness that would put to shame innumerable species among

their feathered competitors. Nay, there are even fish, like some kinds

of eels and the African mud-fish, that scarcely live in the water at

all, but merely frequent wet and marshy places, where they lie snugly in

the soft ooze and damp earth that line the bottom. If I have only

succeeded, therefore, in relieving the mind of one sensitive and

retiring fish from the absurd obloquy cast upon its appearance when it

ventures away for awhile from its proper element, then, in the pathetic

and prophetic words borrowed from a thousand uncut prefaces, this work

will not, I trust, have been written in vain.