324 PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



*Saus8ure saw eels, rotifern, aud infusoria in hot si)rinj;s of Aise, iu 

 Saxony, in 1790, at a temperature of 113° F. 



* Bruce says that at Feriana, the ancient Thala, are springs of warm 

 water without the town, where he saw small fishes, 4 inches long, not 

 unlike gudgeons. The temperature is not noted, but he says: "Upon 

 trying the heat by the thermometer I remember to have been much sur- 

 prised that they could have existed, and even not been boiled, by con- 

 tinuing so long in the heat of this medium." 



* Facts mentioned by Somerset induced Broussounet to make some 

 experiments on the degree of heat which river fish are capable of endur 

 ing. Details of the degrees of heat are not stated, but many species 

 lived several days in water too hot for the hand. (This aud the preced 

 ing citation from Dr. Hodgkin's additions to the translation of Dr. W 

 F. Edwards' work "On the Influence of Physical Agents on Life.") 



t Professor Goode writes: "In warm countries an analogous phenom 

 enon (to hybernation) takes place, which has been called cvstivation 

 When the lakes and streams are dried up by the heat, the fish, seek 

 refuge in the deepest pools, and when they too are dried, they bury 

 themselves in the mud at the bottom and remain torpid until the rainy 

 season refills the reservoirs and revives them." 



J Day reports that on January 18, 1869, he visited a large tank which 

 was then almost dry, having only about four inches of water in the 

 center, while the circumference was hard enough to walk on. The soil 

 was a thick and tenacious bluish clay, from which, fully thirty paces 

 from the water and two feet below the surface, were taken five living 

 fishes. Two were Ophiocephahia punctatuH, and three were Rhincohdella 

 aculcata. They were covered witli a thick adherent slime. "J.Z^ were 

 lively and not in the least torpid.''^ Day also reports AmpJiipnous cuckia 

 as having been dug up under similar circumstances. Mr. Whiting, 

 chief officer of the western province of Ceylon, iuformed Sir Emerson 

 Tennent that he had been twice present when the peasants had been 

 digging up fish of nine to twelve inches long, full-grown and healthy, 

 ^\\\c\x jumped on the hanlc wlien exposed to the light. 



Batrachians, tortoises, and laud-snails are commonly found in a torpid 

 state during the hot and dry months, a state which may truly be called 

 cvstiration, but which differs decidedly from the condition of activity 

 described above as observed in buried fishes, and fi)r which there is no 

 very obvious explanation. 



The instances cited are sufficient to show that the popular belief that 

 fishes possess no animal heat of their own rests upon well-attested 

 observations. At first sight it is difficult to understand otherwise how 

 these animals can undergo the extremes of heat and cold which they 

 have been known to undergo and continue to live. Yet, when the 

 adaptability of birds and mammals, whose normal range of body tem- 

 perature is so extremely narrow compared with that of fishes, to extremes 



* Quoted by Yarrell, loc. cit. t Goode, ojj. cit. 



t" Fresh Water Fishes of ludia," p. 28. 



