. Birds of other lands, reptiles, fishes, jointed animals and lower forms;. Zoology; Birds; Reptiles; Fishes. 212 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD African species is perhaps the better known of the two. On the approach of the dry season it buries itself in the mud at the bottom of the river, and when the latter becomes dry the mud hardens, holding the fish a prisoner till the return of the wet season several months later. A considerable number of these fishes have from time to time been dug out and sent to England enclosed in the mud into which they had retreated. The writer remembers assisting
. Birds of other lands, reptiles, fishes, jointed animals and lower forms;. Zoology; Birds; Reptiles; Fishes. 212 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD African species is perhaps the better known of the two. On the approach of the dry season it buries itself in the mud at the bottom of the river, and when the latter becomes dry the mud hardens, holding the fish a prisoner till the return of the wet season several months later. A considerable number of these fishes have from time to time been dug out and sent to England enclosed in the mud into which they had retreated. The writer remembers assisting in the liberation of some during the last meeting of the British Association at Oxford. So hard had the prison-walls become that the mass had to be plunged into tepid water; this soon brought about a dissolut'^on of the soil, and in a short time the fishes were swimming about as if in their native river^. The African lung-fish is known also as the Muu-FISH ; its American relative as the Lepidosiren, or South American Mud-fish. In the American species, as in its African relative, the fins are whip-like in form; but the hinder or ventral pair, which correspond to the hind limbs of the higher vertebrated animals, are remarkable in that in the male they develop during the breeding-season numerous thread-like processes, richly supplied with blood, the function of which is as yet unknown. The young, both of the African and South American mud-fishes, bear external gills closely ^ resembling those of the tad- poles of the frog and other Amphibia; traces of these gills remain throughout life in the African \ . W S. RudlanI SI Smi BOTTLE-NOSED CHIMtERA 7//tf rcmarkahU artature in jrorn of the mouth is probably an orparj of touch ,s Shark-like in their general chaiacters, the , now briefly con- t W^BH^^nKSsKaK^mttl^^^^^^ sidered, are nevertheless regarded as constituting a very distinct group of great antiquity. J The modern representa- tives of the group are few
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