These remarks serve to explain the 'reason why' these fishes can exist for months out of water. Thus, on the approach of the hot season, the Mudfishes leave their watery homes, and wriggle into the soft mud of their rivers. Here they burrow out a kind of nest, coiling head and tail together; and as the mud dries and hardens, the fishes remain in this temporary tomb, breathing throughout the warm season like true land-dwellers, by means of the lung-like air-bladder. When the wet season once more returns, the fishes are aroused from their semi-torpid state by the early rains moistening the surrounding clay; and when the pools and rivers once more attain their wonted depth, the _Lepidosirens_ emerge from their nests, seek the water, breathe by means of their gills, and otherwise lead a true aquatic existence. With such a combination of the characters of land and water animals, it is little to be wondered at that the true position of the Mudfishes in the zoological scale should have formed a subject for much discussion. They appear, however, to be true fishes, and not amphibians, and they therefore may legally occupy a prominent position among the oddities of their class. Other curious beings included among the fishes are the so-called Globe-fishes (_Diodon_, &c.), which derive their name from their power of distending their bodies with air at will; and their bodies being usually provided with spines, they may be judged to present a rather formidable front to any ordinary adversary, in their expanded condition. Then also we have the curious Trigger-fishes (_Balistes_), so named from the prominent pointed spine in front of the first of the back-fins; this spine firmly holding its erect position until the second spine or fin-ray be depressed, when the first spine is released by mechanism resembling that of the trigger of a gun. The obvious use of such an apparatus is clearly of a defensive kind; and it is remarkable to find a familiar mechanical appliance of man so accurately reproduced in the fish--or rather, _vice versâ_. * * * * * Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. * * * * * _All Rights Reserved._ * * * * * Transcriber's Note--The following correction has been made to this text: on page 73, "torwards" changed to "towards". End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, by Various