342 
FISHES. 
[Chap. X. 
suddenly appear in the replenished tanks and in the 
hollows which they overflow, are mature and well -grown 
fish. 1 Besides, the latter are found, under 
the circumstances I have described, in all 
parts of the interior, whilst the prodigy of 
a supposed fall of fish from the sky has 
been noticed, I apprehend, only in the vi- 
cinity of the sea, or of some inland water. 
The surmise of the buried spawu is one 
sanctioned by the very highest authority. 
Mr. Yakeell in his "History of British 
Fishes" adverting to the fact that ponds (in 
India) which had been previously converted 
into hardened mud, are replenished with 
small fish in a very few days after the com- 
mencement of each rainy season, offers this 
solution of the problem as probably the true 
one : ie 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 organisation as ova, the vitality 
is preserved till the recurrence, and contact 
FISH COfiRAL. 
1 I had an opportunity, on one nected with any watercourse or 
occasion only, of witnessing the pool. 
phenomenon which gives rise to Mr, Whiting, who was many 
this popular belief. I was driving years resident in Trincomalie, 
in the cinnamon gardens near the writes me that he " had often been 
fort of Colombo, and saw a violent told by the natives on that side of 
but partial shower descend at no the island that it sometimes rained 
great distance before me. On fishes ; and on one occasion " (he 
coming to the spot I found a multi- adds) "I was taken by them, in 1849, 
tude of small silvery fish from one to a field at the village of Karran- 
and a half to two inches in length, cotta-tivo, near Batticaloa, which 
leaping on the gravel of the high was dry when I passed over it in 
road, numbers of which I collected the morning, but had been covered 
and brought away in my palankin. in two hours by sudden rain to the 
The spot was about half a mile depth of three inches, in which 
from the sea, and entirely uncon- there was then a quantity of small 
