ban poisson.  An rapport de l’auteur de l’ Ayin Akbery (tom. ii, p. 146, ed. 1800), dans le Soubah do 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 prennant des batons d’environ une aune do long, qu’ils enfoncent dans la vase, et ils y trouvent quantite de grands et petits 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 Tellec 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 Joao Gabriel, a Creole Portuguese, born in Abyssinia, who had visited the Mareb, 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 hassar” 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."[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.