Singing Fish.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 22 May 1914, Page 8

Singing Fish.

HAS " RAGTIME " REACHED

THEM ?

From time to time travellers in various parts of the world have told tales of strange music rising from the water around the boat in which they sat, and this strange music has been attributed to fishes. The sounds resemble the muffled tones of an organ, the sweetest piping treble blended with the lowest bass, or else one long note like the distant rolling of a drum. Two or three variations of this fish have been found, some round Ceylon in sea water, others near Borneo in fresh water, and others again near ■Rombay, and as near home as the Bay of Naples. The drummer fish of North America is best known, perhaps. It grows to the length of about four or five feet, and travels about in shoals. The sound is said to be made by an air-bladder and the action of the upper and lower teeth, with which three movable plates in the gullet are armed ; but it is not known whether they produce this sound when feeding or only at certain seasons of the year. There is a little fish, too, in the seas round Burma which, when irritated, inflates itself to a ridiculous size and croaks like a frog. Its mouth is like that of a turtle, and it can nip very severely with its mandibles. Another singing fish, more rare than the other two varieties mentioned, is that heard round the Bocas: Islands, Trinidad, near Bombay, or occasionally in the Bay of Naples. This fish lives in unfrequented shallows, estuaries, and muddy creeks, where Europeans rarely go, and resembles the fresh-water perch of Europe. It is about lOin. long, and white in colour, with bluish spots. It begins to sing at sunset and continues all the night, and it is believed that the sound is only made when the fish is attached to some object by a little projection from the back of the head, and that it cannot make any sound whilst swimming. It is suggested, too, that to these fishes might be ' -attributable the legends of sirens and sea-nymphs that sang in caves and lured brave mariners to their doom.