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 ascer- 

 tained, 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 Ophiocephalidae 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 bj- 

 some bird, and might no doubt have continued wriggling among 

 them"*. Neither Cantorf 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 pro- 

 portionate 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 commence- 

 ment, 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 Gangos, p. 99. t Malayan Fishes, p. 88. 



X Ceylon, vol. i. p. 217. § British Fishes, vol. i. p. 25. 



