Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/187

Rh considerably in advance of the pectorals. These latter then, representing the fore-legs of quadrupeds, are in the Frog-fishes so formed as to bear no slight resemblance, both in form and function, to feet. The bones of the wrist on which the fin is jointed are greatly lengthened, and projected beyond the skin of the body, and so closely resemble the bones of the fore-arm (the radius and the ulna), as to have been mistaken for them by a distinguished naturalist. The ventrals have a similar structure; and both are palmated in such a manner as to present a resemblance to the webbed foot of an aquatic fowl. The freedom given to the fins by their protrusion and their form enable them to be used as hands and feet; and the facility with which these fishes can crawl by means of their mimic limbs, we have personally witnessed in a little pelagic species of Antennarius, that inhabits the fields of floating weed in the gulf-stream of the northern Atlantic. Over the broad yellow surface of these floating fields, that look like parched meadows, the little Frog-fish crawls and disports itself, pushing aside the tangled stems with its foot-like ventrals, and clambering hither and thither with the energy and freedom of a quadruped.

But the power of crawling out of the water would be of little avail to a fish, unless it were endowed at the same time with some faculty by which its respiration could be maintained during its absence from the water, its breathing medium. In order to extract the oxygen needful for the revivification of the blood, it is indispensable that the minutely ramified filaments of the gills, the breathing organs, be kept moist, for