seche, les habitans prennent des batons d’environ une aune de 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 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 Joao 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 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.”

[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.

[Illustration:  THE ANABAS OF THE DRY TANKS]