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 aerial 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 aestivate, 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 li