THE PIKE FAMILY. 223 



upon the return of the water they have been immediately 

 found in apparently undiminished numbers. The phe- 

 nomenon is not, however, confined to the Esocidce ; the 

 same thing has been observed with regard to Carp and 

 Tench; and it is a curious circumstance, of the truth of 

 which I have been frequently assured by those who have 

 witnessed it, that in New South Wales, where great droughts 

 are common, the large frogs of the country will myste- 

 riously disappear in the manner described, and cannot be 

 found even by digging deep into the mud. Their croaking 

 also, one of the most constant and striking sounds in 

 Australian bush-life, ceases altogether. Yet on the first 

 fresh of rain they at once reappear in their pools as nume- 

 rous and noisy as before. 



Sir Emerson Tennent, in his admirable ' History of 

 Ceylon,^ gives a highly interesting account of the fish 

 inhabiting the tanks and reservoirs of that island. Many 

 of these pools, he says, are twice in each year liable to be 

 evaporated to dryness, tUl the mud of the bottom is con- 

 verted into dust, and the clay cleft by the heat into gaping 

 apertures. Yet within a very few days after the change of 

 the monsoon the natives are busily engaged in fishing in 

 these very spots. This operation may be seen in the low- 

 lands which are traversed by the high road leading from 

 Colombo to Kands, the hollows on either side of which, 

 before the period referred to, are covered with dust ; but 

 when flooded by the rains they are immediately resorted to 

 by the peasants with baskets, in which the fish are encircled 



