es dug
up from such situations."[2]

[Footnote 1: See Paper "_on some Species of Fishes and Reptiles in
Demerara_," by J. HANDCOCK, Esq., M.D., _Zoological Journal_, vol. iv.
p. 243.]

[Footnote 2: A curious account of the _borachung_ or "ground fish" of
Bhootan, will be found in Note (C.) appended to this chapter.]

In those portions of Ceylon where the country is flat, and small tanks
are extremely numerous, the natives are accustomed in the hot season 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
Malliativoe, within a few miles of Kottiar, near the bay of Trincomalie,
and again at a tank between Ellendetorre and Arnitivoe, 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.

[Illustration: THE ANABAS OF THE DRY TANKS.]

Being desirous of obtaining a specimen of 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 is an Anabas, closely resembling the _Perca scandens_ of Daldorf; but
on minute examination it proves to be a species unknown in India, and
hitherto found only in Boreno and China. It is the _A. oligolepis_ of
Bleek.

But the faculty of becoming torpid at such periods is not confined in
Ceylon to the crocodile sand fishes;--it is also possessed by some of
the fresh-water mollusca and aquatic coleoptera. One 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. When, during the dry season, the water is about to
evaporate, it burrows and conceals itself[1] till the returning rains
restore it to activity, and reproduce its accustomed food. There, at a
considerable depth in the soft mud, it deposits a bundle of eggs with a
white calcareous shell, to the number of one hundred or more in each
group. The _Melania Paludina_ in the same way re