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 aerial 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.
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