PLATANISTA. 421 



4^ 



shipping of Calcutta, which can only he accounted for on the supposition that they 

 are engaged in a search for food, and like movements have also heen noticed hy night. 

 The food of the Gangetic dolphin, as pointed out hy Reinhardt, chiefly consists of 

 fish and Crustacea. The many fishermen whom I have interrogated on this suhject 

 have informed me that the dolphin seeks its food on the muddy bottom of the river. 

 The only specimen I ever succeeded in harpooning was caught close to the half-sunken 

 remains of a large ship, which was lying close to the river hank on the edge of a 

 subaqueous alluvial cliff, over which it eventually fell into deep water. The outer 

 margin of the wreck was a favourite resort of FalcBmon carcinus, and fishermen were 

 daily in the habit of diving to its base in search of these prawns, which they there 

 found very abundant. I have observed, while the fishermen were thus engaged, one 

 or more dolphins plunging quite close to them, and it was on one of these occasions 

 that I was so fortunate as to isolate and capture one. On opening its stomach, I found 

 it filled with prawns, thus verifying the previous assertion of the fishermen that the 

 dolphins so observed were in the pursuit of prawns, which they found in the mud at 

 the bottom of the wreck. While the dolphins were thus feeding, I have frequently 

 timed the duration of their stay at the bottom and found it generally to extend 

 to about two minutes. It is probable that the dolphin is guided to its food by the 

 tactile sensibility of its long snout, with which it grovels in the mud, because, as will 

 be hereafter shown, the diminutive organ of vision, in this most anomalous Cetacean, 

 is essentially rudimentary. 



I have examined numerous other stomachs of this dolphin, and have found 

 in them, besides Falcsmon carcinus, the unquestionable remains of Wallago 

 attu, and Saccohranchus fossilis, both mud-frequenting fish. Besides these fish, 

 however, Reinhardt found in the stomach of the specimen he examined Clupea 

 telara, a species of Fimelodes and a large species of Fenceus, and E^oxburgh 

 says that in the stomach of one individual he found only some grains of paddy 

 (rice in the husk), a few fragments of shells, and many Kving active ascarides.' 

 Lebeck also observed rice in the stomach and mouth, and many living ascarides 

 and grains of rice in the former. Mixed among the contents of stomachs examined 

 by me, I have observed grains of paddy, seeds of the Kudoo grass, Faspalum 

 scrobiculatum, and remains of beetles, while in the stomach of one there was a 

 solitary undigested bee. 



It is difiB.cult to offer a quite satisfactory explanation of the presence of grain 

 in the stomach of the dolphin. There can be little doubt but that it finds access 

 adventitiously, and that it is in no way its food any more than beetles or bees. 

 Two explanations suggest themselves : either that the rice had formed part of the 

 contents of the stomachs of the fish swallowed by the dolphin, or that particles 

 of rice had found their way into the stomach from the mud in which it grovels 

 for its food. Large quantities of husked and unhusked rice are sold from boats 

 at one of the ghats in the port of Calcutta, and it is noticeable that at that spot 



1 This ascaride, which is remarkably prevalent in the dolphin, has heen identified hy Dr. Cohhold as Ascaris 

 simplex, Eud., P. Z. S. 1876, p. 297. 



