Excerpt from Lectures Natural History After these remarks, I may tell you that it is by a muscular movement of their ribs that fish can propel themselves along dry land, somewhat in the same way that eels and serpents are known to do. N ow, if you will look at this sketch of a fish I have brought with me, you will see that what may be called ribs can be used as organs of muscular motion, according to the will of the animal. I should be making this lecture of too great a length if I was to enter more minutely into the particulars of the anatomy of these crawling fishes but I hope enough has been said to convince you that they exist. As to the fact of fish ascending trees, I will only mention one proof of it, which is, that there is a little climbing perch well known to naturalists, and which is found in the mangrove swamps. It can ascend trees like a chimney-sweep, and this it does by only using a pair of prickles from the gill-flaps, instead of elbows, and thus it gains the tops of stems many feet above high-water mark, picking off the flies that alight on the tree it climbs up. But let us now turn to flying fish. There are several different species of these, and they are sadly persecuted, being pursued in the sea by bonitos and other rapacious fishes, and take flight when they are in danger from them. While in the air, the frigate and other marine birds make them their prey. It may seem to you as sur prising that there should be flying fish as well as creeping and climb ing fish, and yet they are known to exist. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.