these reservoirs and tanks are, twice in each year, liable to be evaporated to dryness till the mud of the bottom is converted into dust, and the clay cleft by the heat into gaping apertures. Yet within a very few days after the change of the monsoon, the natives are busily engaged in fishing in those very spots and in the hollows contiguous to them, although entirely unconnected with any pool or running streams; in the way in which Knox described nearly 200 years ago, with a funnel-shaped basket, open at bottom and top, which, as he says, they "jibb down, and the end sticks in the mud, which often happens upon a fish; which, when they feel beating itself against the sides, they put in their hands and take it out, and reive a ratan through their gills, and so let them drag after them." 1

FROM KNOX'S CEYLON, A.D. 1681.

This operation may be seen in the lowlands, which are traversed by the high road leading from Colombo to Kandy, the hollows on either side of which, before the

for situations, is one of the mysteries of other eastern countries as well as Ceylon and India. In Persia irrigation is carried on to a great extent by means of wells sunk in line in the direction in which it is desired to lead a supply of water, and these are connected by channels, which

are carefully arched over to protect them from evaporation. These kanats, as they are called, are full of fish, although neither they nor the wells they unite have any connection with streams or lakes.

1 KNOX, Historical Relation of Ceylon, Part I. ch. vii.

change of the monsoon, are covered with dust or stunted grass; but when flooded by the rains, they are immediately resorted to by the peasants with baskets, constructed precisely as Knox has stated, in which the fish are encircled and taken out by the hand.'

So singular a phenomenon as the sudden reappearance of full-grown fishes in places which a few days before had been encrusted with hardened clay, has not failed to attract attention; but the European residents have been contented to explain it by hazarding the conjecture, either that the spawn had lain imbedded in the dried earth till released by the rains, or that the fish, so unexpectedly discovered, fall from the clouds during the deluge of the

monsoon.

As to the latter conjecture; the fall of fish during showers, even were it not so problematical in theory, is too rare an event to account for the punctual appearance of those found in the rice-fields, at stated periods of the year. Both at Galle and Colombo in the south-west monsoon, fish are popularly thought to have fallen from the clouds during violent showers, but those found on the occasions that give rise to this belief, consist of the smallest fry, such as could be caught up by waterspouts, and vortices analogous to them, or otherwise blown on shore from the surf; whereas those which suddenly appear in the replenished tanks and in the hollows which they overflow, are mature and well-grown fish.

As anglers, the native Singhalese exhibit little expertness; but for fishing the rivers, they construct with singular ingenuity fences formed of strong stakes, protected by screens of ratan, which stretch diagonally across the current; and along these the fish are conducted into a series of enclosures from which retreat is impracticable. Mr. LAYARD, in the Magazine of Natural History for May, 1853, has given a diagram of one of these fish "corrals," as they are called.

P 2

Besides, the

latter are found, under the circumstances I have described, in all parts of the interior, whilst the prodigy of a supposed fall of fish from the sky has been noticed, I apprehend, only in the vicinity of the sea, or of some inland water.

66

The surmise of the buried spawn is one sanctioned by the very highest authority. Mr. YARRELL in his “ • History of British Fishes," adverting to the fact that ponds which had been previously converted into hardened mud, are replenished with small fish in a very few days after the commencement of each rainy season, offers this solution of the problem as probably the true one, "the impreg nated ova of the fish of one rainy season, are left unhatched in the mud through the dry season, and from their low state of organisation as ova, the vitality is preserved till the recurrence, and contact of the rain and oxygen in the next wet season, when vivification takes place from their joint influence."1

This hypothesis, however, appears to have been offered upon imperfect data; for although some fish

coming to the spot I found a multitude of small silvery fish from one and a half to two inches in length, leaping on the gravel of the high road, numbers of which I collected and brought away in my palankin. The spot was about half a mile from the sea, and entirely unconnected with any watercourse or pool.

Mr.WHITING, who was many years resident at Trincomalie, writes me that he "had often been told by the natives on that side of the island that it sometimes rained fishes; and on one occasion (he adds) I was taken by them, in 1849, to a field at the village of Karran-cotta-tivo, near Batticaloa, which was dry when I passed over it in the morning, but had been covered in two hours by sudden rain to the depth of three inches, in which there was then a quantity of small fish. The water had no connection with any pond or stream whatsoever." Mr. CRIPPS, in like manner, in speaking of Galle,

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says: "I have seen in the vicinity of the fort, fish taken from rain-water that had accumulated in the hollow parts of land that in the hot season are perfectly dry and parched. The place is accessible to no running stream or tank; and either the fish, or the spawn from which they were produced, must of necessity have fallen with the rain."

Mr. J. PRINSEP, the eminent secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, found a fish in the pluviometer at Calcutta, in 1838.-Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, vol. vi. p. 465.

A series of instances in which fishes have been found on the continent of India under circumstances which lead to the conclusion that they must have fallen from the clouds, have been collected by Dr. BUIST of Bombay, and will be found in the appendix to this chapter.

YARRELL, History of British Fishes, introd. vol. i. p. xxvi.

like the salmon scrape grooves in the sand and place their spawn in inequalities and fissures; yet as a general rule spawn is deposited not beneath but on the surface of the ground or sand over which the water flows, the adhesive nature of each egg supplying the means of attachment. But in the Ceylon tanks not only is the surface of the soil dried to dust after the evaporation of the water, but the earth itself, twelve or eighteen inches deep, is converted into sun-burnt clay, in which, although the eggs of mollusca, in their calcareous covering, are in some instances preserved, it would appear to be as impossible for the ova of fish to be kept from decomposition as for the fish themselves to sustain life. Besides, moisture in such situations is only to be found at a depth to which spawn could not be conveyed by the parent fish, by any means with which we are yet acquainted.

But supposing it possible to carry the spawn sufficiently deep, and to deposit it safely in the mud below, which is still damp, whence it could be liberated on the return of the rains, a considerable interval would still be necessary after the replenishing of the ponds with water to admit of vivification and growth. But so far from this interval being allowed to elapse, the rains have no sooner ceased than the fishing of the natives commences, and those captured in wicker cages are mature and full grown instead of being "small fish" or fry, as affirmed by Mr. Yarrell.

Even admitting the soundness of his theory, and the probability that, under favourable circumstances, the spawn in the tanks might be preserved during the dry season so as to contribute to the perpetuation of their inhabitants, the fact is no longer doubtful, that adult fish in Ceylon, like some of those that inhabit similar waters both in the New and Old World, have been endowed by the Creator with the singular faculty of providing against the periodical droughts either by journeying overland in search of still unexhausted water, or, on its utter disap

pearance, by burying themselves in the mud to await the return of the rains. Travelling Fishes. It was well known to the Greeks that certain fishes of India possessed the power of leaving the rivers and returning to them again after long migrations on dry land, and modern observation has fully confirmed their statements. The fish leave the pools and nullahs in the dry season, and led by an instinct as yet unexplained, shape their course through the grass towards the nearest pool of water. A similar phenomenon is observable in countries similarly circumstanced. The Doras of Guiana 2 have been seen travelling over land during the dry season in search of their natural element, in such droves that the negroes have filled baskets with them during these terrestrial excursions.

Pallegoix in his account of Siam, enumerates three species of fishes which leave the tanks and channels and traverse the damp grass; and Sir John Bowring, in his account of the embassy to the Siamese kings in 1855, states, that in ascending and descending the river Meinam to Bankok, he was amused with the novel sight of fish leaving the river, gliding over the wet banks, and losing themselves amongst the trees of the jungle."

The class of fishes which possesses this power are chiefly

I have collected into a note, which will be found in the appendix to this chapter, the opinions entertained by the Greeks and Romans upon this habit of the fresh-water fishes of India. See note B.

2 D. Hancockii, Cuv. et Val.

3 Sir R. Schomburgk's Fishes of Guiana, vol. i. pp. 113, 151, 160. Another migratory fish was found by Bosc very numerous in the fresh waters of Carolina and in ponds liable to become dry in summer. When captured and placed on the ground, they always directed themselves towards the nearest water, which they could not possibly see, and which they must have discovered by some in

Eels kept in a garden, when August arrived (the period at which instinct impels them to go to the sea to spawn) were in the habit of leaving the pond and were invariably found moving eastward in the direction of the sea.-YARRELL, vol. ii. p. 38i. Anglers observe that fish newly caught, when placed out of sight of water, always struggle towards it to escape.

+ PALLEGOIX, vol. i. p. 144. 5 Sir J. BOWRING'S Siam, vol. i. p. 10.