APPEXDIX A. 495 



made to thn Journal Asiatic Society of licni^al, 1870, pp. 289 and 243. Mr. James 

 llaiiu'y writes : " I have thf honour to brin'? to your notico tlio occurrence in tlio 

 districts of Buckergangc and Jossore, and over as far north as Farrocdporc, I bclicvo, 

 periodically during the prevalence of the S.W. llonsoon and rainy season, of certain 

 peculiar noises, from the south and south-east directions or seaboard, rcsoml)iing the 

 report of cannons, or loud explosions, usually heard distinctly after a heavy fall of 

 rain or cessation of a squall, (jcHeralkj whilst the tide is rising." The generally received 

 opinion seems to be, that these sounds, resembling a distant cannonade, really proceed 

 from the surf breaking explosively, if I may use the term in this connexion, on the 

 coast. But if this is so, may we not sup|)ose that the ceaseless roll of a moderate 

 surf, after a storm, might, to any one anchored some miles off, in a still night, so 

 fall on the ear as to fill the air with its murmur, or, as Mr. Parish phrases it, 

 " the air was all sound," without supposing that fish were connected with its 

 production? The Burmese boatmen, too, were unaware of any fish capable of 

 causing it, though in places where such is the case, the phenomenon in question 

 is commonly understood, and the fish implicated in its production known to the 

 inhabitants. Doubtless fish capable of producing sounds are met with on the 

 Burmese coast, but a little more corroborative evidence to connect the phenomenon 

 described bv Mr. Parish with such an origin, would be acceptable, though Mr. Parish 

 has himself (and who should know better?) no doubts on the subject. 



A writer who signs himself \V. C. P., in the same number of "Science Gossip" 

 tliat Cimtains the paper by ilr. Parish, describes the sounds refem'd by him to fisli 

 in tlie following words : " OU' Ceylon we were about oue hundred miles north of 

 Colombo, eight leagues from the shore, and in a depth of water exceeding one 

 hundred fathoms, time shortly after sunset. When the sounds were first heard, 

 they might have been taken for faint echoes of music from the distant shore, until, 

 after listening attentively, they were founil to come up from below the surface of 

 the sea, and fell upon the ear something like the tones of an ^olian harp, rising 

 and falling in regular cadence, and imiiresscd the mind with a sense of something 

 distinct fiom what had ever been experienced before." The next morning some 

 " sucking fish" {echeneis) were captured, whereon W. C. P. at once concludes that 

 they caused the sound by means of the suctorial disk which is placed on their heads ! ! 

 lie goes on to add: "This supposition is strengtheued by the fact that if the ear 

 be laid upon an adjoining part of the vessel while the sounds are heard, the source 

 of them seems to be in contact with the vessel, and no longer at a distance, as when 

 the car is detached." This sentence shows, what is too liable to be lest sight of, 

 the difficulty of judging the precise direction whence such diffused sounds originate, 

 and also points, I think, to an unsuspected source, namely, the rigging of the vessel. 

 Whoever has stood beneath a post sustaining a telegraph wire, will remember the 

 loud (or soft it may be) sound produced by a gentle air rippling over the wire, and 

 I cannot but think that during a calm, with just perhaps a faint air in the rigging, 

 sounds such as described above, as being in "contact with the vessel" may be thus 

 produced, rather than by "sucking fish" fastening themselves to the sides of the 

 ship, or any external source whatever. The following remarks, by the Rev. C. Parish, 

 on the possible connexion of some such obscure plienomonon, with the pretty conceit 

 of the Sirens, will be I'ead with interest by all who delight in ancient myths and 

 tlie stoi'ies which have surviv(^d from times of yore to the present, the veritable 

 intellectual /'oi'sa/w and jetsam of our race in its infancy. 



"As it is probable that most fabulous stories have some foundations in fact, being 

 but an exaggeration of the fact, it appears to me far from unlikely that the fable of 

 the Sirens is traceable to the sound made by so-called musical fish. 



" The ancients must have heard those sounds, though, perhaps, at some intcn-als — 

 for, after all, the recorded instances (iven now are not numerous ; and tlioy certainly 

 could not have understood that which, at this distance of time, is still a subject of 

 inquiry. The Sirens were supposed to be Kca-nymphs who lured mariners to 

 destruction by their song. It would appear that the sounds made by mu.sical fish are 

 only heard in the night, beginning at niglilfall. It was thus on the only two occasions 

 on wliich they were heard by me : once at sea, as recorded above, in the night ; and 



