Physical Geography of Hindostan. 335 



lakes, or the channels of majestic streams. The rays of the 

 sun, no longer fierce and intolerable as they were a week be- 

 fore, shaded by intervening vapours or transient clouds, pre- 

 sent that interminglement of alternating light and shade in 

 the landscape which, beautiful in itself, becomes doubly de- 

 lightful from the contrast it exhibits to the uninterrupted 

 and unceasing glare of the previous part of the year. After 

 a few days' weather of this sort the rains return with re- 

 doubled violence, and continue to pour down for forty or 

 fifty days, at an average of above an inch a -day, the ordinary 

 fall in June, July, and August, amounting at Bombay to about 

 70 inches. Within a week or ten days of the commence- 

 ment of the rains, so soon as the surface of the soil is fairly 

 saturated, and occupied everywhere by rivulets or pools of 

 standing water, the whole earth seems to swarm with fish. 

 They are of four or five different varieties, such as abound 

 in the sea along-shore, and can live either in fresh or salt 

 water. They vary in size from an inch in length to that of 

 the forefinger, and are caught in myriads in baskets or in nets 

 affording sport to the boys, and an agreeable article of food. 

 Though their appearance has been mentioned by every one 

 who has attempted to describe the rains for the last two 

 centuries, it has never been so satisfactorily accounted for 

 as could be desired. Colonel Underwood of the Madras 

 Engineers, mentions a case when he was overtaken by a 

 furious shower in the midst of the dry season, when the earth 

 was at once covered with fish, which must have fallen from 

 the heavens. But this scarcely seems to account for those 

 which appear some ten days after the burst of the monsoon. 

 Equally remarkable with this, though without its mystery, 

 is the appearance of myriads of frogs of the most enormous 

 dimensions, which occurs at the opening of the rains. At 

 night their croakings fill the air whenever a shower falls ; 

 and they are seen in hundreds by the margins, or in the 

 waters of every pool — at times resting on the lotus leaf, at 

 times hurrying from the pursuit of the water-snakes which 

 hunt and devour them. They are of a bright greenisli yellow, 

 and measure from six to seven inches from snout to vent, 

 often bounding from six to nine feet at a spring. The rains 



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