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Show 1868.] DR. F. DAY ON INDIAN FRESHWATER FISHES. 285 ting, they told him that otherwise some of the fish would climb up the stakes and get out. It has been surmised that the species here alluded to was the Anabas ; but nothing has been definitely ascertained, and it is probable that it may have been a Boleophthalmus, as the B. boddaerti, common on the coasts of India and Ceylon, is quite capable of crawling along stakes. Neither the Anabas nor the Ophiocephalidse can be kept in an aquarium unless the top is covered over, as, even when the water is a foot or more from the surface, they always manage to jump out in the night and crawl away. But the climbing-propensity imputed by some authors to the Anabas has been as strongly denied by others. Hamilton Buchanan observes that to what enjoyment this dangerous faculty could lead a wretched fish he is totally at a loss to imagine, and he therefore believed that Daldorf was mistaken. " The palm, as is often the case with those of its species, may have been growing with its lower parts nearly horizontal, and the fish may have then moved along it as well as on the land ; or the palm may have been covered by knobs, often left by the cultivators when they remove the branches (stipites), and the fish have been left amongst these knobs by some bird, and might no doubt have continued wriggling among them"*. Neither Cantor*f in the Malayan peninsula, nor Sir Emerson Tennent in Ceylon J, heard of any climbing-faculties being attributed to the Anabas in those localities. A curious phenomenon in the Indian rivers and tanks, and one which has never yet been altogether satisfactorily explained, is the sudden appearance of large, healthy, adult fish, with others of proportionate sizes, immediately after a heavy fall of rain, in situations which have been perfectly dry and hard for months. When the pieces of water inhabited by fish periodically dry up, what becomes of them ? Yarrell § tried to solve this question by the theory of the sudden vivification of ova, and observes it appears that " the impregnated ova of the fish of one rainy season are left unhatched in the mud through the dry season, and, from their low state of organization as ova, the vitality is preserved till the occurrence and contact of the rain and the oxygen of the next wet season, when vivification takes place from their joint influence." But in opposition to this is the fact that, in India, the ova are generally deposited at the commencement, and not at the end of the rainy season, whilst large adult fishes abound, and no very small ones are visible. Again, if ova were thus deposited, and left near the surface of the mud, they would be exposed to destruction from insects, birds, and other animals, and in the event of escaping all other enemies they would assuredly be destroyed by the heat. The fishes would therefore be obliged to bury the ova deeply in the mud ; and it is not easy to imagine how they could successfully accomplish this feat. If, when the water failed, the fishes died, some of them at least would be seen dead or dying, while many of the tanks would soon * Fishes of the Ganges, p. 99. t Malayan Fishes, p. 88. X Ceylon, vol. i. p. 217. § British Fishes, vol. i. p. 25. |