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.
Pages:
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374