Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/320

306 is large, and the mouth opens wide. The brilliant colors of the Chœtodons, properly so called, are here wanting; the body is olive-brown or yellow, and bears broad, round, or oblong spots, or vertical stripes of black color; the eye is rose-color and brilliant; the belly, silvery-white.

According to Cuvier and Valencienne, "though the mouth of this fish differs immensely in its organization from that of Chelmon, it, too, can shoot drops of water to a great height, and can hit, with almost unerring aim, insects and other little animals on aquatic plants, or even on the herbage at the water's edge. The inhabitants of sundry regions in India," add these authors, "and particularly the Chinese in Java, keep these fish in their houses for the sake of the amusement afforded by witnessing their performances, offering it ants, and flies on a string, or on the end of a stick, brought within range. . . . The species is known in the Indian Archipelago under the Malay name of ikcansumpit."

Bleeker, in a recent work on the Toxotæ, tells us that at Batavia this fish is no longer kept, as it appears to have been a century ago, either by Europeans or by the Chinese. He further says that neither from Chinese nor from natives, whether at Batavia or elsewhere, has he been able to obtain any confirmation of the accounts which have been given concerning its skill in seizing its prey. According to him, the celebrity enjoyed by the archer-fish is undeserved, and rests upon a misapprehension; in short, he shows from the very texts of Pallas and Schlosser that Hommel's observation applies to the long-beaked Chelmon, of which we have spoken above, and that like habits have been gratuitously attributed to the two species, they having been regarded as generically identical.—La Nature.



VERY adult human being carries about with him an atmosphere of individuality. By this means is the gregarious animal called man enabled to preserve in himself such an isolation from the mass of his fellows that he can gain and hold whatever may be his share of prosperity and remembrance. In this individuality lie his powers of offense and defense—the buckler and spear of his ego; and in it also is expressed the sum of his mental and physical traits in such a manner that, once having known, we may remember him. There are two elements that enter into the formation of this distinctive and memorable quality, mental and physical. These factors enter unequally into the formation of this individual total. The element that 