successive hours
twenty-seven inches of rain fell, thirty-five fell in twenty-six hours,
seven inches in one hour and a-half, being the heaviest fall on record.
At Poonah, on the 3d of August 1852, after a very heavy fall of rain,
multitudes 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 assumption that they are carried up by squalls or
violent winds, from rivers or spaces 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."

Sir E. Tennent adds the following examples:--"I had an opportunity, on
one occasion only, of witnessing the phenomenon which gives rise to this
popular belief. I was driving in the cinnamon gardens near the fort of
Colombo, and saw a violent but partial shower descend at no great
distance before me. On 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 Trincomalee, writes me that
he 'had been often 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 Karrancotta-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
connexion 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 accumulated in the hollow
parts of the 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.'"[77]

Mr J. Prinsep, the eminent secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
found a fish in the pluviometer at Calcutta, in 1838.[78]

It is a highly curious fact that the pools, reservoirs, and tanks in
India and Ceylon are well provided with fish of various