Читать книгу Dragons of the Air: An Account of Extinct Flying Reptiles - H. G. Seeley - Страница 15

Turning from this reference to the realm of mythology to existing nature, the power of flight is popularly associated with all the chief types of vertebrate animals—fishes, frogs, lizards, birds, and mammals. Many of the animals ill deserve the name of flyers, and most are exceptions to different conditions of existence which control their kindred, but it is convenient to examine for a little the nature of the structures by which this movement in the air, which is not always flight, is made possible. Certain fishes, like the lung-fish Ceratodus, of Queensland, and the mud-fish Lepidosiren, are capable of leaving the water and living on land, and for a time breathe air. But neither these fishes nor Periophthalmus, which runs with rapid movement of its fins and carries the body more or less out of water, or the climbing perch, Anabas, carried out of water over the country by Indian jugglers, ever put on the slightest approach to wings.