[Footnote 2: This assertion must be qualified by a fact stated by Mr. E.A. Layard, who mentions that on visiting one of the fishing stations on a Singhalese river, where the fish are caught in staked enclosures, as described at p. 212, and observing that the chambers were covered with netting, he asked the reason, and was told "_that some of the fish climbed up the sticks and got over_."--_Mag. Nat. Hist._ for May 1828, p. 390-1.]
[Footnote 3: Strange accidents have more than once occurred in Ceylon arising from the habit of the native anglers; who, having neither baskets nor pockets in which to place what they catch, will seize a fish in their teeth whilst putting fresh bait on their hook. In August 1853, a man carried into the Pettah hospital at Colombo, having a climbing perch, which he thus attempted to hold, firmly imbedded in his throat. The spines of its dorsal fin prevented its descent, whilst those of the gill-covers equally forbade its return. It was eventually extracted by the forceps through an incision in the oesophagus, and the patient recovered. Other similar cases have proved fatal.]
_Burying Fishes._--But a still more remarkable power possessed by some of the Ceylon fishes, is that of secreting themselves in the earth in the dry season, at the bottom of the exhausted ponds, and there awaiting the renewal of the water at the change of the monsoon.
The instinct of the crocodile to resort to the same expedient has been already referred to[1], and in like manner the fish, when distressed by the evaporation of the tanks, seek relief by immersing first their heads, and by degrees their whole bodies, in the mud; and sinking to a depth at which they find sufficient moisture to preserve life in a state of lethargy long after the bed of the tank has been consolidated by the intense heat of the sun. It is possible, too, that the cracks which reticulate the surface may admit air to some extent to sustain their faint respiration.
[Footnote 1: See _ante_, P. II. ch. iii. p. 189.]
The same thing takes place in other tropical regions, subject to vicissitudes of draught and moisture. The Protopterus[1] which inhabits the Gambia (and which, though demonstrated by Professor Owen to possess all the essential organisation of fishes, is nevertheless provided with true lungs), is accustomed in the dry season, when the river retires into its channel, to bury itself to the depth of twelve or sixteen inches in the indurated mud of the banks, and to remain in a state of torpor till the rising of the stream after the rains enables it to resume its active habits. At this period the natives of the Gambia, like those of Ceylon, resort to the river, and secure the fish in considerable numbers as they flounder in the still shallow water. A parallel instance occurs in Abyssinia in relation to the fish of the Mareb, one of the sources of the Nile, the waters of which are partially absorbed in traversing the plains of Taka. During the summer its bed is dry, and in the slime at the depth of more than six feet is found a species of fish without scales, different from any known to inhabit the Nile.[2]