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Updated: June 12, 2025
Neptune in his car drawn by dolphins was not more completely at home than I in my gun-case, towed by my fish-like hippopotami hunters. After pirouetting in several strong whirlpools, during which time a crowd of women on the Sofi side of the river were screaming to Allah and the Prophet to protect us from crocodiles, we at length arrived.
Sir Morton Pippitt, the Duke of Lumpton, and Lord Mawdenham hovered before him like three dull puppets in a cheap show; and he was inclined to look up the name of Marius Longford in one of the handy guides to contemporary biography, in order to see if that flaccid and fish-like personage had really done anything In the world to merit his position as a shining luminary of the 'Savage and Savile. Accustomed as he was to watch the ebb and flow of modern literature, he had not yet sighted either the Longford straw or the Adderley cork, among the flotsam and jetsam of that murky tide.
In a second order of the salamanders the gills are lost in the metamorphosis, and when fully grown they have only pulmonary respiration. In this fish-like condition they reach sexual maturity, and remain throughout life at the lower stage of the gilled Amphibia. It was formerly regarded as a permanent gilled amphibian persisting throughout life at the fish-stage.
Accordingly we descended to the surface of the reef, and headed for the mysterious brown patch, which we soon reached, some suspicion of its true character having dawned upon us, even before we arrived at the spot, from the circumstance that, as we approached, our nostrils became cognisant of a "most ancient and fish-like smell". The suspicion that we had formed was confirmed upon our arrival by the discovery that the object of our curiosity was a great bed of oysters, hove up and exposed to the air by the convulsion of the previous night.
On a low reddish cliff was a house hedged round by pine-trees. A bit of broken jetty ran out from the bottom of the cliff. We hooked on to this, and landed. An ancient, fish-like man came slouching down and took charge of the cutter. Pearse led us towards the house, Pasiance following mortally shy all of a sudden.
This strangely detailed account says that instead of a voice the Sea Man 'skreaked, but this is of small interest compared to whether he had a tail or any fish-like attributes. The fact that he escaped would suggest the presence of legs, but the historian is silent on this all-important matter.
The room was of an octagon shape, with dark oak wainscoting and ceiling; the chairs were of a suitable character, mostly with high upright backs, rudely carved, as were some book-shelves, which occupied two of the sides, while a massive table, supported by sea monsters, or at all events by creatures of fish-like form, stood in the centre; another table of similar character stood against the side of the room with writing materials on it, and there was a sofa of antique form, and two large chests of some dark wood, with brass clasps and plates on the lids and sides, so tarnished however by the sea air, as scarcely to be discerned as brass.
Though covered with scales, and most fish-like in outline, it presents points of anatomical resemblance both to salamanders and lizards; and, as a connecting bond between the North American mud-fish on the one hand and the wonderful lepidosiren on the other, it forms a true member of the long series by which the higher animals generally trace their descent from a remote race of marine ancestors.
The alluvium of all this experience bore a nearer resemblance to worldly wisdom than might have been conjectured; much nearer, indeed, than it does in many old instructors, whose eyes get fish-like as their blood grows cold, and who are not fit to be trusted with anything more practical than a gerund or a cosine.
The fish had already been developed, and the Devonian rocks show it swarming, in great numbers and variety, in the enclosed seas and round the fringe of the continents. The first generation was a group of strange creatures, half fish and half Crustacean, which are known as the Ostracoderms. The hind-part of their bodies was remarkably fish-like in structure.
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