Title: Aquatic life
Identifier: aquaticlife319171918baus (find matches)
Year: 1917-1918 (1910s)
Authors: Bausman, Joseph E
Subjects: Aquariums; Fish culture
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. E. Bausman
Contributing Library: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
CLIMBING PERCH ' WALTER LAKTNOT BRIND, F. Z. S.
Text Appearing After Image:
Climbing Perch (Anabas scandens) Back in 1900, before there had been any extensive importations of exotic fishes, I made the acquaintance of Ana- bas scandens, the CHmbing Perch. Our introduction took place in the store of Fred Kaempfer, Chicago's leading pet- stock dealer. The fish had been sent to Chicago by Otto Eggling, of New York City. Eggling had a Lascar sailor on a British tramp steamer plying between Calcutta and New York, who brought "muchli" (fishes) with him. The Climbing Perch, and incidentally it is not a pierch, was known and com- mented upon by travelers more than a hundred years before I possessed a pair. Lieutenant Daldorf, of the Danish navy, mentions, in his memoirs of 1797, that he captured it in the act of climbing a tree. He found it with the spiny margin of the gill-covers hooked into the interstices of the bark, and watched while it curled its tail around, thrust its pectoral fins for- ward and pushed ahead. The opercula are remarkably mobile and may be moved outward almost at right angles to the body, and the mere closing, if in contact with an object, is sufficient to pull an average fish forward half an inch. The movements described by Lieutenant Dal- dorf exactly correspond to those I have obesrved when placing this fish on the ground and out of water. In the instance described by the naval officer it seems to me quite possible that a fallen trunk of a tree, partly submerged, in a pond in process of drying up, as so often happens in India, had afforded the fish an easy

Note About Images