[1032] Smith’s Hist. of the Bible (1890), and Singer’s Jewish Encyclopædia, V., p. 403, however, mention the Tunny, Herring, Eel, etc.
[1033] See, also, E. W. G. Masterman, Studies in Galilee, Chicago, 1909.
[1034] Dr. Boulenger points out, however, that the affinity between the two rivers is restricted to a few species of the Silurids and Cichlids, whose importance is outweighed by the total absence from the Jordan of such characteristic African families as the Polypteridæ, Mormyridæ, and Characinidæ.
[1035] This statement of Tristram’s is controverted by Masterman, op. cit., p. 44, note 1, who writes, “This is impossible. They leave the shelter of their fathers’ mouths when about the size of a lentil, and apparently never return.” The male Pipe fish Syngnathus acus not only carries the eggs, but also the young fish in a pouch, in a manner similar to the kangaroo. The young, even after they have begun to swim about, return when alarmed to the parental cavity. There are only one or two instances of a female fish taking sole charge of the ova: of these is Aspreto batrachus, which by lying on the top of her eggs presses them in to her spongy body and carries them thus, till they are hatched.
[1036] In islands off Northern Australia are found walking and climbing fish, Periophthalmus koelreuteri and P. australis, which ascend the roots of the mangrove by the use of ventral and pectoral fins, and jump and skip on the mud with the alertness of rabbits (The Confessions of a Beachcomber, p. 204, London, 1913).
Ktesias, a possible contemporary of Herodotus, writes that in India are little fish whose habit it is now and then to have a ramble on dry land.
[1037] Wilkinson, op. cit., II. p. 118.
[1038] Encyl. Bibl., ii. col. 1528, from Thomson, The Land and the Book, p. 402.
[1039] Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, vol. I., Digest, 41, 1, 1.
[1040] Op. cit., supra, p. 405.