Part 31 (1/2)

Dr. Buist, after enumerating cases in which fishes were said to have been thrown out from volcanoes in South America and precipitated from clouds in various parts of the world, adduces the following instances of similar occurrences in India. ”In 1824,” he says, ”fishes fell at Meerut, on the men of Her Majesty's 14th Regiment, then out at drill, and were caught in numbers. In July, 1826, live fish were seen to fall on the gra.s.s at Moradabad during a storm. They were the common cyprinus, so prevalent in our Indian waters. On the 19th of February, 1830, at noon, a heavy fall of fish occurred at the Nokulhatty factory, in the Daccah zillah; depositions on the subject were obtained from nine different parties. The fish were all dead; most of them were large: some were fresh, others were rotten and mutilated. They were seen at first in the sky, like a flock of birds, descending rapidly to the ground; there was rain drizzling, but no storm. On the 16th and 17th of May, 1833, a fall of fish occurred in the zillah of Futtehpoor, about three miles north of the Jumna, after a violent storm of wind and rain. The fish were from a pound and a half to three pounds in weight, and of the same species as those found in the tanks in the neighbourhood. They were all dead and dry. A fall of fish occurred at Allahabad, during a storm in May, 1835; they were of the chowla species, and were found dead and dry after the storm had pa.s.sed over the district. On the 20th of September, 1839, after a smart shower of rain, a quant.i.ty of live fish, about three inches in length and all of the same kind, fell at the Sunderbunds, about twenty miles south of Calcutta. On this occasion it was remarked that the fish did not fall here and there irregularly over the ground, but in a continuous straight line, not more than a span in breadth. The vast mult.i.tudes of fish, with which the low grounds round Bombay are covered, about a week or ten days after the first burst of the monsoon, appear to be derived from the adjoining pools or rivulets and not to descend from the sky. They are not, so far as I know, found in the higher parts of the island. I have never seen them, though I have watched carefully, in casks collecting water from the roofs of buildings, or heard of them on the decks or awnings of vessels in the harbour, where they must have appeared had they descended from the sky.

One of the most remarkable phenomena of this kind occurred during a tremendous deluge of rain at Kattywar, on the 25th of July, 1850, when the ground around Rajkote was found literally covered with fish; some of them were found on the tops of haystacks, where probably they had been drifted by the storm. In the course of twenty-four successive hours twenty-seven inches of rain fell, thirty-five fell in twenty-six hours, seven inches within one hour and a half, being the heaviest fall on record. At Poonah, on the 3rd of August, 1852, after a very heavy fall of rain, mult.i.tudes of fish were caught on the ground in the cantonments, full half a mile from the nearest stream. If showers of fish are to be explained on the a.s.sumption that they are carried up by squalls or violent winds, from rivers or s.p.a.ces of water not far away from where they fall, it would be nothing wonderful were they seen to descend from the air during the furious squalls which occasionally occur in June.”

NOTE (B.)

MIGRATION OF FISHES OVER LAND.

_Opinions of the Greeks and Romans_.

It is an ill.u.s.tration of the eagerness with which, after the expedition of Alexander the Great, particulars connected with the natural history of India were sought for and arranged by the Greeks, that in the works both of ARISTOTLE and THEOPHRASTUS the facts are recorded of the fishes in the Indian rivers migrating in search of water, of their burying themselves in the mud on its failure, of their being dug out thence alive during the dry season, and of their spontaneous reappearance on the return of the rains. The earliest notice is in the treatise of ARISTOTLE _De Respiratione_, chap. ix., who mentions the strange discovery of living fish found beneath the surface of the soil, [Greek: ton ichthuon oi polloi zosin en te ge, akinetizontes mentoi, kai euriskontai oruttomenoi]; and in his History of Animals he conjectures that in ponds periodically dried the ova of the fish so buried become vivified at the change of the season.[1] HERODOTUS had previously hazarded a similar theory to account for the sudden appearance of fry in the Egyptian marshes on the rising of the Nile; but the cases are not parallel. THEOPHRASTUS, the friend and pupil of Aristotle, gave importance to the subject by devoting to it his essay [Greek: Peri tes ton ichthyon en zero diamones], _De Piscibus in sicco degentibus_. In this, after adverting to the fish called _exocoetus_, from its habit of going on sh.o.r.e to sleep, [Greek: apo tes koites], he instances the small fish ([Greek: ichthydia]), which leave the rivers of India to wander like frogs on the land; and likewise a species found near Babylon, which, when the Euphrates runs low, leave the dry channels in search of food, ”moving themselves along by means of their fins and tail.” He proceeds to state that at Heraclea Pontica there are places in which fish are dug out of the earth, ([Greek: oryktoi ton ichthyon]), and he accounts for their being found under such circ.u.mstances by the subsidence of the rivers, ”when the water being evaporated the fish gradually descend beneath the soil in search of moisture; and the surface becoming hard they are preserved in the damp clay below it, in a state of torpor, but are capable of vigorous movements when disturbed.

In this manner, too,” Theophrastus adds, ”the buried fish propagate, leaving behind them their sp.a.w.n, which becomes vivified on the return of the waters to their accustomed bed.” This work of Theophrastus became the great authority for all subsequent writers on this question.

ATHENaeUS quotes it[2], and adds the further testimony of POLYBIUS, that in Gallia Narbonensis fish are similarly dug out of the ground.[3]

STRABO repeats the story[4], and one and all the Greek naturalists received the statement as founded on reliable authority.

[Footnote 1: Lib. vi. ch, 15, 16, 17.]

[Footnote 2: Lib. viii. ch. 2.]

[Footnote 3: Ib. ch. 4.]

[Footnote 4: Lib. iv. and xii.]

Not so the Romans. LIVY mentions it as one of the prodigies which were to be ”expiated,” on the approach of a rupture with Macedon, that ”in Gallico agro qua induceretur aratrum sub glebis pisces emersisse,”[1]

thus taking it out of the category of natural occurrences. POMPONIUS MELA, obliged to notice the matter in his account of Narbon Gaul, accompanies it with the intimation that although a.s.serted by both Greek and Roman authorities, the story was either a delusion or a fraud.[2]

JUVENAL has a sneer for the rustic--

”miranti sub aratro Piscibus inventis.”--_Sat_. xiii. 63.

[Footnote 1: Lib. xlii. ch. 2.]

[Footnote 2: Lib. ii ch, 5.]

And SENECA, whilst he quotes Theophrastus, adds ironically, that now we must go to fish with a _hatchet_ instead of a hook; ”non c.u.m hamis, sed c.u.m dolabra ire piscatum.”[1] PLINY, who devotes the 35th chapter of his 9th book to this subject, uses the narrative of Theophrastus, but with obvious caution, and universally the Latin writers treated the story as a fable.

[Footnote 1: _Nat. Quaest._ vii 16.]

In later times the subject received more enlightened attention, and Beckmann, who in 1736 published his commentary on the collection [Greek: Peri Thaumasion akousmaton], ascribed to Aristotle, has given a list of the authorities about his own times,--Georgius Agricola, Gesner, Rondelet, Dalechamp, Bomare, and Gronovius, who not only gave credence to the a.s.sertions of Theophrastus, but adduced modern instances in corroboration of his Indian authorities.

NOTE (C.)

CEYLON FISHES.