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In Demerara, a fish called the Hassar makes a floating cradle of grass or leaves for its eggs, over which it watches carefully, being ready to defend it bravely when attacked; thus in Australia, an eel called the Jew-fish was one day noticed swimming round and round a clear place among the reeds, and it turned out that it was guarding a nest of stones which it had placed in the river bed.
Another fish of this sort is the Frog-Fish, a hideous creature which is caught near Asia. It can crawl about a room, if shut up in one, and looks exactly like an ugly frog. But the most wonderful of all is a South American fish called the Hassar. It usually lives in pools of water inland, and if the pool where it is happens to dry up, it will travel a whole night over land in search of a new home.
It is an experienced traveler, and is said to supply itself with water for its journey. If the Hassar finds all the pools and streams dried up, it will bury itself in the sand, and fall into a kind of stupor until the rainy season comes around and brings it back to life. "Aunt Sheen," so called from the beauty of her skin, used to tell Sammy another story about this famous fish.
Fishermen catch the Hassar by holding a basket in front of the nest and beating it with sticks. When the poor mother comes out to defend her family, she falls into the basket and is captured. "And serves her right, too," Aunt Sheen always concluded. "Building a nest and watching over it is a silly thing for a sensible fish to do.
It seems that the Hassar builds a nest just like a bird, only hers is under water along the reeds and rushes of some shore. The nest is made of vegetable fibres, and is shaped like a hollow ball, flat at the top. From a hole in this ball the mother can pass in and out, and she watches over her nest with the most tender care, until the young ones leave it.
In South America the "round-headed hassar" of Guiana, Callicthys littoralis, and the "yarrow," a species of the family Esocidæ, although they possess no specially modified respiratory organs, are accustomed to bury themselves in the mud on the subsidence of water in the pools during the dry season.
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