220 



ZOOLOGY. 



[rART II. 



province, informs me that, on two occasions, he was pre- 

 sent accidentally when the villagers Avere so engaged, 

 once at the tank of Moeletivoe, within a few miles of 

 Kottiar, near the bay of Trincomahe, 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 flnng 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 moodhar sent to me proved 

 to be an Anabas, and closely resembles the Perca scan- 

 dens of Daldorf. 



UUu^-^2i/y 



THE ANABAS OF THE DR7 TANKS, 



But the faculty of becoming torpid at such periods is 

 not confined in Ceylon to the crocodiles and fishes, it is 

 equally possessed by some of the fresh-water mollusca 

 and aquatic coleoptera. The largest of the former, the 

 Ampullaria glauca, is found in still water in all parts 

 of the island, not alone in the tanks, but in rice-fields 

 and the watercourses by wliich they are irrigated. 

 There it deposits a bundle of eggs with a white cal- 

 careous shell, to the number of one hundred and more 



