LABTRINTHIFOEM PHAEYNaEALS. 241 



terns on the house-tops of Calcutta^ and elsewhere, 

 which have been for many weeks without a drop of 

 water, into vivaria swarming with small glistening in- 

 mates of firom two to three inches long, supposed to have 

 fallen from the clouds* It is rare indeed to meet with 

 an Indian who has not fallen in with showers of these 

 rain-fishjt and who will not fall out with you if you 

 doubt it. A thousand citizens, both of credit and re- 

 nown, in London, and as many men of metal and mou- 

 stache at Cheltenham and Harrowgate, are ready to 

 vouch that the clouds which burst periodically over the 

 parched earth in that country, 'drop' not only 'fatness' 

 into her furrows, but abundance of fish as well ; and one 

 of the most notable of these offspring of the clouds is a 

 little creature known to modern naturalists as the ana- 

 bas testudineus ! The chief peculiarity of the small 

 group to which it belongs (the tenth, or Labyrinthiform 

 Pharyngeal family) is the division of the superior pha- 

 ryngeals into thin laminae, more or less numerous, 

 forming intercepting ceUs, in which water can remain, 

 and flow upon and moisten the gills when these fish are 

 upon dry land. Anabas seems at first sight an extra- 

 ordinary name for a creature said to descend from the 

 clouds, but the appellation has exclusive reference to 



mouths without eating frogs ; and that the stench proceeding 

 from myriads of these creatures, which everywhere strewed the 

 ground, had become intolerably pestiferous and offensive : €(j)vyov 

 Tfjv x^P""} they quitted the district, and left the ' hoarse nation of 

 marauders' in undisputed possession of the land. 



* Vide a short notice of these fish, in ' Annals of Philosophy,' 

 vol. viii. 



t Polybius, quoted by Strabo, says 'these rain-fish leap on 

 land like frogs ; also that on the subsidence of the waters they 

 retire underground to gnaw the grass-roots, of which they 

 are very fond, 0iXT;8ov(rt yap rfi rrjs aypaxmos piCv> so that they 

 must be as troublesome to crops as wire-worms and rodentiary 

 insects. 



M 



