that intersects the channel, two or three hundred yards to the eastward.  They were said to be heard at night, and most distinctly when the moon was nearest the full, and they were described as resembling the faint sweet notes of an AEolian harp.  I sent for some of the fishermen, who said they were perfectly aware of the fact, and that their fathers had always known of the existence of the musical sounds, heard, they said, at the spot alluded to, but only during the dry season, as they cease when the lake is swollen by the freshes after the rain.  They believed them to proceed not from a fish, but from a shell, which is known by the Tamil name of (oorie cooleeroo cradoo, or) the “crying shell,” a name in which the sound seems to have been adopted as an echo to the sense.  I sent them in search of the shell, and they returned bringing me some living specimens of different shells, chiefly littorina and cerithium.[1]

[Illustration:  CERITHIUM PALUSTRE.]

[Footnote 1:  Littorina laevis.  Cerithium palustre. Of the latter the specimens brought to me were dwarfed and solid, exhibiting in this particular the usual peculiarities that distinguish (1) shells inhabiting a rocky locality from (2) their congeners in a sandy bottom.  Their longitudinal development was less, with greater breadth, and increased strength and weight.]

In the evening when the moon rose, I took a boat and accompanied the fishermen to the spot.  We rowed about two hundred yards north-east of the jetty by the fort gate; there was not a breath of wind, nor a ripple except those caused by the dip of our oars.  On coming to the point mentioned, I distinctly heard the sounds in question.  They came up from the water like the gentle thrills of a musical chord, or the faint vibrations of a wine-glass when its rim is rubbed by a moistened finger.  It was not one sustained note, but a multitude of tiny, sounds, each clear and distinct in itself; the sweetest treble mingling with the lowest bass.  On applying the ear to the woodwork of the boat, the vibration was greatly increased in volume.  The sounds varied considerably at different points, as we moved across the lake, as if the number of the animals from which they proceeded was greatest in particular spots; and occasionally we rowed out of hearing of them altogether, until on returning to the original locality the sounds were at once renewed.

This fact seems to indicate that the causes of the sounds, whatever they may be, are stationary at several points; and this agrees with the statement of the natives, that they are produced by mollusca, and not by fish.  They came evidently and sensibly from the depth of the lake, and there was nothing in the surrounding circumstances to support the conjecture that they could be the reverberation of noises made by insects on the shore conveyed along the surface of the water; for they were loudest and most distinct at points where the nature of the land, and the intervention of the fort and its buildings, forbade the possibility of this kind of conduction.