o drink; so that the surface was everywhere indented with
footmarks in addition to the cracks in the surrounding baked mud, into
which the fish tumbled in their progress. In those holes which were deep
and the sides perpendicular they remained to die, and were carried off
by kites and crows."

"My impression is that this migration takes place at night or before
sunrise, for it was only early in the morning that I have seen them
progressing, and I found that those I brought away with me in chatties
appeared quiet by day, but a large proportion managed to get out of the
chatties at night--some escaped altogether, others were trodden on and
killed."

"One peculiarity is the large size of the vertebral column, quite
disproportioned to the bulk of the fish. I particularly noticed that all
in the act of migrating had their gills expanded."]

Referring to the _Anabas scandens_, DR. HAMILTON BUCHANAN says, that of
all the fish with which he was acquainted it is the most teliacious of
life; and he has known boatmen on the Ganges to keep them for five or
six days in an earthen pot without water, and daily to use what they
wanted, finding them as lively and fresh as when caught.[1] Two Danish
naturalists residing at Tranquebar, have contributed their authority to
the fact of this fish ascending trees on the coast of Coromandel, an
exploit from which it acquired its epithet of _Perca scandens_. DALDORF,
who was a lieutenant in the Danish East India Company's service,
communicated to Sir Joseph Banks, that in the year 1791 he had taken
this fish from a moist cavity in the stem of a Palmyra palm, that grew
near a lake. He saw it when already five feet above the ground
struggling to ascend still higher;--"suspending itself by its
gill-covers, and bending its tail to the left, it fixed its anal fin in
the cavity of the bark, and sought by expanding its body to urge its way
upwards, and its march was only arrested by the hand with which he
seized it."[2]

[Footnote 1: _Fishes of the Ganges_, 4to. 1822.]

[Footnote 2: _Transactions Linn. Soc._ vol. iii. p. 63. It is
remarkable, however, that this discovery of Daldorf, which excited so
great an interest in 1791, had been anticipated by an Arabian voyager a
thousand years before. Abou-zeyd, the compiler of the remarkable MS.
known since Renaudot's translation by the title of the _Travels of the
Two Mahometans_, states that Suleyman, one of his informants, who
visited India at the clo