These fishes appear to be monogamous, some breeding in grassy swamps or the edges of tanks and others in holes in the river banks.
They construct nests amongst the water-weeds where the ova are deposited. When very young the fry of all species, Aruan, Toman, Bujok, etc., keep with, and are defended by, their parents, but as soon as they are sufficiently strong to capture prey for themselves, they are driven away to seek their own subsistance: those which are too obstinate to leave being eaten by their progenitors.
The Malays have a saying Bagai toman makan anak, "Like the Toman fish which eats its own young," which is applied to persons in high places who misuse their powers, oppressing those whom they should protect.
The Aruan and Toman will readily take a bait, especially a frog, and are said to rise to the salmon fiy. The largest run well over 3 feet in length.
They are caught in great quantities in the Krian irrigation reservoir at Bukit Merah and sent alive in tubs all over the F. M. S.
NANNYGAI.
(BERYCIDAE.)
The Sěběkah karang (Myripristis murdjan) is a small fish of no particular economic importance.
The Berycidae, of which there are about 70 species, live, mostly at great depths, in the seas all over the world.
The "Nannygai" of Australia, which belongs to this family, is highly esteemed on account of its delicate flavour and firm white flesh. Roughley writes,
"Until recently the supply of Nannygai' to the market has been an intermittent one, occasional specimens only being found there.
"The trawlers have now quite altered this and large quantities are being received from them daily, with the result that it is one of the commonest fish seen in the market.
"Hundreds of people visiting there in search of trawled fish are now seeing the Nannygai' for the first time."
I suggest that the capture of the "Nannygai" and other, hitherto unrecorded, species of good edible deep water fish, by means of a commercial steam trawler, is well within the region of possibility. We have, as a perusal of this book will shew, many fish in our waters which range as far as Australia but no engines or methods of capture are utilized in our waters which take bottom feeding fishes in depths of 50 fathoms.
