Part 28 (1/2)
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 pa.s.sed 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 quant.i.ty of small fish. The water had no connection with any pond or stream whatsoever.” Mr. CRIPPS, in like manner, in speaking of Galle, says: ”I have seen in the vicinity of the fort, fish taken from rain-water that had acc.u.mulated 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 sp.a.w.n 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 circ.u.mstances 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.]
The surmise of the buried sp.a.w.n 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 impregnated 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]
[Footnote 1: YARRELL, _History of British Fishes_, introd. vol. i. p.
xxvi.]
This hypothesis, however, appears to have been offered upon imperfect data; for although some fish like the salmon sc.r.a.pe grooves in the sand and place their sp.a.w.n in inequalities and fissures; yet as a general rule sp.a.w.n 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 sp.a.w.n could not be conveyed by the parent fish, by any means with which we are yet acquainted.
But supposing it possible to carry the sp.a.w.n 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 replenis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances, the sp.a.w.n 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 disappearance, 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[1] 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 gra.s.s towards the nearest pool of water. A similar phenomenon is observable in countries similarly circ.u.mstanced. The Doras of Guiana[2] have been seen travelling over land during the dry season in search of their natural element[3], in such droves that the negroes have filled baskets with them during these terrestrial excursions.
[Footnote 1: 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.]
[Footnote 2: _D. Hanc.o.c.kii_, Cuv. et Val.]
[Footnote 3: Sir R. Schomburgk's _Fishes of Guiana_, vol. i. pp. 113, 151, 160. Another migratory fish was found by Bose 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 internal index.” They belong to the genus _Hydrargyra_, and are called Swampines.-- KIBBY, _Bridgewater Treatise_, vol i. p. 143.
Eels kept in a garden, when August arrived (the period at which instinct impels them to go to the sea to sp.a.w.n) were in the habit of leaving the pond and were invariably found moving eastward _in the direction of the sea_.--YARRELL, vol. ii. p. 384. Anglers observe that fish newly caught, when placed out of sight of water, always struggle towards it to escape.]
Pallegoix in his account of Siam, enumerates three species of fishes which leave the tanks and channels and traverse the damp gra.s.s[1]; and Sir John Bowring, in his account of the emba.s.sy 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.[2]
[Footnote 1: PALLEGOIX, vol. i. p. 144.]
[Footnote 2: Sir J. BOWRING'S _Siam_, vol. i. p. 10.]
The cla.s.s of fishes which possess this power are chiefly those with labyrinthiform pharyngeal bones, so disposed in plates and cells as to retain a supply of moisture, which, whilst crawling on land, gradually exudes so as to keep the gills damp.[1]
[Footnote 1: CUVIER and VALENCIENNES, _Hist. Nat. des Poissons, _tom.
vii. p. 246.]
The individual which is most frequently seen in these excursions in Ceylon is a perch called by the Singhalese _Kavaya_ or _Kawhy-ya_, and by the Tamils _Pannei-eri_, or _Sennal_. It is closely allied to, if not identical with, the _Anabas scandens_ of Cuvier, the _Perca scandens_ of Daldorf. It grows to about six inches in length, the head round and covered with scales, and the edges of the gill-covers strongly denticulated. Aided by the apparatus already adverted to in its head, this little creature issues boldly from its native pools and addresses itself to its toilsome march generally at night or in the early morning, whilst the gra.s.s is still damp with the dew; but in its distress it is sometimes compelled to travel by day, and Mr. E.L. Layard on one occasion encountered a number of them travelling along a hot and dusty gravel road under the midday sun.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist_., May, 1853, p. 390. Mr.
Morris, the government-agent of Trincomalie, writing to me on this subject in 1856, says--”I was lately on duty inspecting the bund of a large tank at Nade-cadua, which, being out of repair, the remaining water was confined in a small hollow in the otherwise dry bed. Whilst there heavy rain came on, and, as we stood on the high ground, we observed a pelican on the margin of the shallow pool gorging himself; our people went towards him and raised a cry of fis.h.!.+ fis.h.!.+ We hurried down, and found numbers of fish struggling upwards through the gra.s.s in the rills formed by the trickling of the rain. There was scarcely water enough to cover them, but nevertheless they made rapid progress up the bank, on which our followers collected about two bushels of them at a distance of forty yards from the tank. They were forcing their way up the knoll, and, had they not been intercepted first by the pelican and afterwards by ourselves, they would in a few minutes have gained the highest point and descended on the other side into a pool which formed another portion of the tank. They were chub, the same as are found in the mud after the tanks dry up.” In a subsequent communication in July, 1857, the same gentleman says--”As the tanks dry up the fish congregate in the little pools till at last you find them in thousands in the moistest parts of the beds, rolling in the blue mud which is at that time about the consistence of thick gruel.”
”As the moisture further evaporates the surface fish are left uncovered, and they crawl away in search of fresh pools. In one place I saw hundreds diverging in every direction, from the tank they had just abandoned to a distance of fifty or sixty yards, and still travelling onwards. In going this distance, however, they must have used muscular exertion sufficient to have taken them half a mile on level ground, for at these places all the cattle and wild animals of the neighbourhood had latterly come to drink; so that the surface was everywhere indented with footmarks in addition to the cracks in the surrounding baked mud, into which the fish tumbled in their progress. In those holes which were deep and the sides perpendicular they remained to die, and were carried off by kites and crows.”
”My impression is that this migration takes place at night or before sunrise, for it was only early in the morning that I have seen them progressing, and I found that those I brought away with me in chatties appeared quiet by day, but a large proportion managed to get out of the chatties at night--some escaped altogether, others were trodden on and killed.”
”One peculiarity is the large size of the vertebral column, quite disproportioned to the bulk of the fish. I particularly noticed that all in the act of migrating had their gills expanded.”]
Referring to the _Anabas scandens_, Mr. Hamilton Buchanan says, that of all the fish with which he was acquainted it is the most tenacious of life; and he has known boatmen on the Ganges to keep them for five or six days in an earthen pot without water, and daily to use what they wanted, finding them as lively and fresh as when caught.[1] Two Danish naturalists residing at Tranquebar, have contributed their authority to the fact of this fish ascending trees on the coast of Coromandel, an exploit from which it acquired its epithet of _Perca scandens_. Daldorf, who was a lieutenant in the Danish East India Company's service, communicated to Sir Joseph Banks, that in the year 1791 he had taken this fish from a moist cavity in the stem of a Palmyra palm, which grew near a lake. He saw it when already five feet above the ground struggling to ascend still higher;--suspending itself by its gill-covers, and bending its tail to the left, it fixed its a.n.a.l fin in the cavity of the bark, and sought by expanding its body to urge its way upwards, and its march was only arrested by the hand with which he seized it.[2]