Part 35 (1/2)

See P. 353.

In Bhootan, at the south-eastern extremity of the Himalayas, a fish is found, the scientific name of which is unknown to me, but it is called by the natives the _Bora-chung_, and by European residents the ”ground-fish of Bhootan.” It is described in the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for_ 1839, by a writer (who had seen it alive), as being about two feet in length, and cylindrical, with a thick body, somewhat shaped like a pike, but rounder, the nose curved upwards, the colour olive-green, with orange stripes, and the head speckled with crimson.[1] This fish, according to the native story, is caught not in the rivers in whose vicinity it is found, but ”in perfectly dry places in the middle of gra.s.sy jungle, sometimes as far as two miles from the banks.” Here, on finding a hole four or five inches in diameter, they commence to dig, and continue till they come to water; and presently the _bora-chung_ rises to the surface, sometimes from a depth of nineteen feet. In these extemporised wells these fishes are found always in pairs, and I when brought to the surface they glide rapidly over the ground with a serpentine motion. This account appeared in 1839; but some years later, Mr. Campbell, the Superintendent of Darjeeling, in a communication to the same journal[2], divested the story of much of its exaggeration, by stating, as the result of personal inquiry in Bhootan, that the _bora-chung_ inhabits the jheels and slow-running streams near the hills, but lives princ.i.p.ally on the banks, into which it penetrates from one to five or six feet. The entrance to these retreats leading from the river into the bank is generally a few inches below the surface, so that the fish can return to the water at pleasure. The mode of catching them is by introducing the hand into these holes; and the _bora-chungs_ are found generally two in each chamber, coiled concentrically like snakes. It is not believed that they bore their own burrows, but that they take possession of those made by land-crabs. Mr.

Campbell denies that they are more capable than other fish of moving on dry ground. From the particulars given, the _bora-chung_ would appear to be an _Ophiocephalus_, probably the _O. barka_ described by Buchanan, as inhabiting holes in the banks of rivers tributary to the Ganges.

[Footnote 1: Paper by Mr. J.T. PEARSON, _Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng._, vol.

viii p. 551.]

[Footnote 2: _Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng._, vol. xi. p. 963.]

CHAP. XI.

Sh.e.l.lS.

_Mollusca.--Radiata, &c._

Ceylon has long been renowned for the beauty and variety of the sh.e.l.ls which abound in its seas and inland waters, and in which an active trade has been organised by the industrious Moors, who clean them with great expertness, arrange them in satin-wood boxes, and send them to Colombo and all parts of the island for sale. In general, however, these specimens are more prized for their beauty than valued for their rarity, though some of the ”Argus” cowries[1] have been sold as high as _four guineas_ a pair.

[Footnote 1: _Cypraea Argus_.]

One of the princ.i.p.al sources whence their supplies are derived is the beautiful Bay of Venloos, to the north of Batticaloa, formed by the embouchure of the Natoor river. The scenery at this spot is enchanting.

The sea is overhung by gentle acclivities wooded to the summit; and in an opening between two of these eminences the river flows through a cl.u.s.ter of little islands covered with mangroves and acacias. A bar of rocks projects across it, at a short distance from the sh.o.r.e; and these are frequented all day long by pelicans, that come at sunrise to fish, and at evening return to their solitary breeding-places remote from the beach. The strand is literally covered with beautiful sh.e.l.ls in rich profusion, and the dealers from Trincomalie know the proper season to visit the bay for each particular description. The entire coast, however, as far north as the Elephant Pa.s.s, is indented by little rocky inlets, where sh.e.l.ls of endless variety may be collected in great abundance.[1] During the north-east monsoon a formidable surf bursts upon the sh.o.r.e, which is here piled high with mounds of yellow sand; and the remains of sh.e.l.ls upon the water mark show how rich the sea is in mollusca. Amongst them are prodigious numbers of the ubiquitous violet-coloured _Ianthina_[2], which rises when the ocean is calm, and by means of its inflated vesicles floats lightly on the surface.

[Footnote 1: In one of these beautiful little bays near Catchavelly, between Trincomalie and Batticaloa, I found the sand within the wash of the sea literally covered with mollusca and sh.e.l.ls, and amongst others a species of _Bullia_ (B. vittata, I think), the inhabitant of which, has the faculty of mooring itself firmly by sending down its membranous foot into the wet sand, where, imbibing the water, this organ expands horizontally into a broad, fleshy disc, by which the animal anchors itself, and thus secured, collects its food in the ripple of the waves.

On the slightest alarm, the water is discharged, the disc collapses into its original dimensions, and the sh.e.l.l and its inhabitant disappear together beneath the sand.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BULLIA VITTATA]

[Footnote 2: _Ianthina communis_, Krause and _I. prolongata_, Blainv.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IANTHINA.]

The trade in sh.e.l.ls is one of extreme antiquity in Ceylon. The Gulf of Manaar has been fished from the earliest times for the large chank sh.e.l.l, _Turbinella_ _rapa_, to be exported to India, where it is still sawn into rings and worn as anklets and bracelets by the women of Hindustan. Another use for these sh.e.l.ls is their conversion into wind instruments, which are sounded in the temples on all occasions of ceremony. A chank, in which the whorls, instead of running from left to right, as in the ordinary sh.e.l.l, are reversed, and run from right to left, is regarded with such reverence that a specimen formerly sold for its weight in gold, but one may now be had for four or five pounds.

COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, writing in the fifth century, describes a place on the west coast of Ceylon, which he calls Marallo, and says it produced ”[Greek: kochlious],” which THEVENOT translates ”oysters;” in which case Marallo might be conjectured to be Bentotte, near Colombo, which yields the best edible ”oysters” in Ceylon.[1] But the sh.e.l.l in question was most probably the chank, and Marallo was Mantotte, off which it is found in great numbers.[2] In fact, two centuries later Abouzeyd, an Arab, who wrote an account of the trade and productions of India, speaks of these sh.e.l.ls by the name they still bear, which he states to be _schenek_[3]; but ”schenek” is not an Arabic word, and is merely an attempt to spell the local term, _chank_, in Arabic characters.

[Footnote 1: COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, in Thevenot's ed. t i. p. 21.]

[Footnote 2: At Kottiar, near Trincomalie, I was struck with the prodigious size of the edible oysters, which were brought to us at the rest-house. The sh.e.l.l of one of these measured a little more than eleven inches in length, by half as many broad: thus unexpectedly attesting the correctness of one of the stories related by the historians of Alexander's expedition, that in India they had found oysters a foot long. PLINY says: ”In Indico mari Alexandri rerum auctores pedalia inveniri prodidere.”--_Nat. Hist._ lib. x.x.xii. ch. 31. DARWIN says, that amongst the fossils of Patagonia, he found ”a ma.s.sive gigantic oyster, sometimes even a foot in diameter.”--_Nat. Voy._, ch. viii.]

[Footnote 3:--ABOUZEYD, _Voyages Arabes,_ &c., t. i. p. 6; REINAUD, _Memoire sur l'Inde,_ &c p. 222.]

BERTOLACCI mentions a curious local peculiarity[1] observed by the fishermen in the natural history of the chank. ”All sh.e.l.ls,” he says, ”found to the northward of a line drawn from a point about midway from Manaar to the opposite coast (of India) are of the kind called _patty_, and are distinguished by a short flat head; and all those found to the southward of that line are of the kind called _pajel_, and are known from having a longer and more pointed head than the former. Nor is there ever an instance of deviation from this singular law of nature. The _Wallampory_, or 'right-hand chanks,' are found of both kinds.”

[Footnote 1: See also the _Asiatic Journal for_ 1827, p. 469.]

This tendency of particular localities to re-produce certain specialities of form and colour is not confined to the sea or to the instance of the chank sh.e.l.l. In the gardens which line the suburbs of Galle in the direction of Matura the stems of the coco-nut and jak trees are profusely covered with the sh.e.l.ls of the beautiful striped _Helix hamastoma_. Stopping frequently to collect them, I was led to observe that each separate garden seemed to possess a variety almost peculiar to itself; in one the mouth of every individual sh.e.l.l was _red_; in another, separated from the first only by a wall, _black_; and in others (but less frequently) _pure white_; whilst the varieties of external colouring were equally local. In one enclosure they were nearly all red, and in an adjoining one brown.[1]

[Footnote 1: DARWIN, in his _Naturalist's Voyage_, mentions a parallel instance of the localised propagation of colours amoungst the cattle which range the pasturage of East Falkland Island: ”Round Mount Osborne about half of some of the herds were mouse-coloured, a tint no common anywhere else,--near Mount Pleasant dark-brown prevailed; whereas south of Choiseul Sound white beasts with black heads and feet were common.”--Ch. ix. p. 192.]