Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 28

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]

[Footnote 1: _Fishes of the Ganges_, 4to. 1822.]

[Footnote 2: _Transactions Linn. Soc._ vol. iii. p. 63. It is remarkable, however, that this discovery of Daldorf, which excited so great an interest in 1791, had been antic.i.p.ated by an Arabian voyager a thousand years before. Abou-zeyd, the compiler of the remarkable MS.

known since Renandot's translation by the t.i.tle of the _Travels of Two Mahometans_, states that Suleyman, one of his informants, who visited India at the close of the ninth century, was told there of a fish which, issuing from the waters, ascended the coco-nut palms to drink their sap, and returned to the sea. "On parle d'un poisson de mer que sortant de l'eau, monte sur la cocotier et boit le suc de la plante; ensuite il retourne a la mer." See REINAUD, _Relations des Voyages faits par les Arabes et Persans dans le neuvieme siecle_, tom. i. p. 21, tom ii. p.

93.]

There is considerable obscurity about the story of this ascent, although corroborated by M. John. Its motive for climbing is not apparent, since water being close at hand it could not have gone for sake of the moisture contained in the fissures of the palm; nor could it be in search of food, as it lives not on fruit but on aquatic insects.[1] The descent, too, is a question of difficulty. The position of its fins, and the spines on its gill-covers, might a.s.sist its journey upwards, but the same apparatus would prove anything but a facility in steadying its journey down. The probability is, as suggested by Buchanan, that the ascent which was witnessed by Daldorf was accidental, and ought not to be regarded as the habit of the animal. In Ceylon I heard of no instance of the perch ascending trees[2], but the fact is well established that both it, the _pullata_ (a species of polyacanthus), and others, are capable of long journeys on the level ground.[3]

[Footnote 1: Kirby says that it is "in pursuit of certain crustaceans that form its food" (_Bridgewater Treatise_, vol. i. p. 144); but I am not aware of any crustaceans in the island which ascend the palmyra or feed upon its fruit. Birgus latro, which inhabits Mauritius and is said to climb the coco-nut for this purpose, has not been observed in Ceylon.]

[Footnote 2: This a.s.sertion must be qualified by a fact stated by Mr.

E.A. Layard, who mentions that on visiting one of the fis.h.i.+ng stations on a Singhalese river, where the fish are caught in staked enclosures, as described at p. 212, and observing that the chambers were covered with netting, he asked the reason, and was told "_that some of the fish climbed up the sticks and got over_."--_Mag. Nat. Hist._ for May 1828, p. 390-1.]

[Footnote 3: Strange accidents have more than once occurred in Ceylon arising from the habit of the native anglers; who, having neither baskets nor pockets in which to place what they catch, will seize a fish in their teeth whilst putting fresh bait on their hook. In August 1853, a man carried into the Pettah hospital at Colombo, having a climbing perch, which he thus attempted to hold, firmly imbedded in his throat.

The spines of its dorsal fin prevented its descent, whilst those of the gill-covers equally forbade its return. It was eventually extracted by the forceps through an incision in the oesophagus, and the patient recovered. Other similar cases have proved fatal.]

_Burying Fishes._--But a still more remarkable power possessed by some of the Ceylon fishes, is that of secreting themselves in the earth in the dry season, at the bottom of the exhausted ponds, and there awaiting the renewal of the water at the change of the monsoon.

The instinct of the crocodile to resort to the same expedient has been already referred to[1], and in like manner the fish, when distressed by the evaporation of the tanks, seek relief by immersing first their heads, and by degrees their whole bodies, in the mud; and sinking to a depth at which they find sufficient moisture to preserve life in a state of lethargy long after the bed of the tank has been consolidated by the intense heat of the sun. It is possible, too, that the cracks which reticulate the surface may admit air to some extent to sustain their faint respiration.

[Footnote 1: See _ante_, P. II. ch. iii. p. 189.]

The same thing takes place in other tropical regions, subject to vicissitudes of draught and moisture. The Protopterus[1] which inhabits the Gambia (and which, though demonstrated by Professor Owen to possess all the essential organisation of fishes, is nevertheless provided with true lungs), is accustomed in the dry season, when the river retires into its channel, to bury itself to the depth of twelve or sixteen inches in the indurated mud of the banks, and to remain in a state of torpor till the rising of the stream after the rains enables it to resume its active habits. At this period the natives of the Gambia, like those of Ceylon, resort to the river, and secure the fish in considerable numbers as they flounder in the still shallow water. A parallel instance occurs in Abyssinia in relation to the fish of the Mareb, one of the sources of the Nile, the waters of which are partially absorbed in traversing the plains of Taka. During the summer its bed is dry, and in the slime at the depth of more than six feet is found a species of fish without scales, different from any known to inhabit the Nile.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Lepidosiren annectans_, Owen. See _Linn. Trans._ 1839.]

[Footnote 2: This statement will be found in QUATREMERE'S _Memoires sur l'Egypte_, tom. i. p. 17, on the authority of Abdullah ben Ahmed ben Solaim a.s.souany, in his _History of Nubia_, "Simon, heritier presomptif du royanme d'Alouah, m'a a.s.sure que l'on trouve, dans la vase qui couvre le fond de cette riviere, un grand poisson sans ecailles, qui ne ressemble en rien aux poissons du Nil, et que, pour l'avoir, il faut creuser a une toise et plus de profondeur." To this pa.s.sage there is appended this note:--"Le patriarche Mendes, cite par Legrand (_Relation Hist. d'Abyssinie_, du P. LOBO, p. 212-3) rapporte que le fleuve Mareb, apres avoir arrose une etendue de pays considerable, se perd sous terre; et que quand les Portugais faisaient la guerre dans ce pays, ils fouilloient dans le sable, et y trouvoient de la bonne eau et du bon poison. Au rapport de l'auteur de _l'Ayin Akbery_ (tom. ii. p. 146, ed.

1800), dans le Soubah de Caschmir, pres du lieu nomme Tilahmoulah, est une grande piece de terre qui est inondee pendant la saison des pluies.

Lorsque les eaux se sont evaporees, et que la vase est presque seche, les habitans prennent des batons d'environ une aune de long, qu'ils enfoncent dans la vase, et ils y trouvent quant.i.te de grands et pet.i.ts poissons." In the library of the British Museum there is an unique MS.

of MANOEL DE ALMEIDA, written in the sixteenth century, from which Balthasar Tellez compiled his _Historia General de Ethiopia alta_, printed at Coimbra in 1660, and in it the above statement of Mendes is corroborated by Almeida, who says that he was told by Joo Gabriel, a Creole Portuguese, born in Abyssinia, who had visited the Merab, and who said that the "fish were to be found everywhere eight or ten palms down, and that he had eaten of them."]

In South America the "round-headed ha.s.sar" of Guiana, _Callicthys littoralis_, and the "yarrow," a species of the family Esocidae, although they possess no specially modified respiratory organs, are accustomed to bury themselves in the mud on the subsidence of water in the pools during the dry season.[1] The _Loricaria_ of Surinam, another Siluridan, exhibits a similar instinct, and resorts to the same expedient. Sir R.

Schomburgk, in his account of the fishes of Guiana, confirms this account of the Callicthys, and says "they can exist in muddy lakes without any water whatever, and great numbers of them are sometimes dug up from such situations."

[Footnote 1: See Paper "_on some Species of Fishes and Reptiles in Demerara_," by J. HANDCOOK, Esq., M.D., _Zoological Journal_, vol. iv.

p. 243.]

In those portions of Ceylon where the country is flat, and small tanks are extremely numerous, the natives in the hot season are accustomed to dig in the mud for fish. Mr. Whiting, the chief civil officer of the eastern province, informs me that, on two occasions, he was present accidentally when the villagers were so engaged, once at the tank of Moeletivoe, within a few miles of Kottiar, near the bay of Trincomalie, and again at a tank between Ellendetorre and Arnetivoe, on the bank of the Vergel river. The clay was firm, but moist, and as the men flung out lumps of it with a spade, it fell to pieces, disclosing fish from nine to twelve inches long, which were full grown and healthy, and jumped on the bank when exposed to the sun light.

Being desirous of obtaining a specimen of the fish so exhumed, I received from the Moodliar of Matura, A.B. Wickremeratne, a fish taken along with others of the same kind from a tank in which the water had dried up; it was found at a depth of a foot and a half where the mud was still moist, whilst the surface was dry and hard. The fish which the moodliar sent to me proved to be an Anabas, and closely resembles the _Perca scandens_ of Daldorf.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ANABAS OF THE DRY TANKS]

But the faculty of becoming torpid at such periods is not confined in Ceylon to the crocodiles and fishes, it is equally possessed by some of the fresh-water mollusca and aquatic coleoptera. The largest of the former, the _Ampullaria glauca_, is found in still water in all parts of the island, not alone in the tanks, but in rice-fields and the watercourses by which they are irrigated. There it deposits a bundle of eggs with a white calcareous sh.e.l.l, to the number of one hundred and more in each group, at a considerable depth in the soft mud, under which, when the water is about to evaporate during the dry season, it burrows and conceals itself[1] till the returning rains restore it to liberty, and reproduce its accustomed food. The _Melania Paludina_ in the same way retires during the droughts into the muddy soil of the rice lands; and it can only be by such an instinct that this and other mollusca are preserved when the tanks evaporate, to re-appear in full growth and vigour immediately on the return of the rains.[2]

[Footnote 1: A knowledge of this fact was turned to prompt account by Mr. Edgar S. Layard, when holding a judicial office at Point Pedro in 1849. A native who had been defrauded of his land complained before him of his neighbour, who, during his absence, had removed their common landmark by diverting the original watercourse and obliterated its traces by filling it to a level with the rest of the field. Mr. Layard directed a trench to be sunk at the contested spot, and discovering numbers of the Ampullaria, the remains of the eggs, and the living animal which had been buried for months, the evidence was so resistless as to confound the wrongdoer, and terminate the suit.]