Chap. X.] 
BURYING FISH. 
355 
But the faculty of becoming torpid at such periods is 
not confined in Ceylon to the crocodile sand fishes ; — 
it is also possessed by some of the fresh-water mol- 
lusca and aquatic coleoptera. One of the former, the 
Ampullaria glauca, is found in still water in all parts 
of the island, not alone in the tanks, but in rice-fields 
and the watercourses by which they are irrigated. 
When, during the dry season, the water is about to 
evaporate, it burrows and conceals itself 1 till the re- 
turning rains restore it to activity, and reproduce its 
accustomed food. There, at a considerable depth in the 
soft mud, it deposits a bundle of eggs with a white 
calcareous shell, to the number of one hundred or more 
in each group. The Melania Paludina in the same 
way retires during the droughts into the muddy soil of 
the rice lands ; and it can only be by such an instinct 
that this and other mollusca are preserved when the tanks 
evaporate, to re-appear in full growth and vigour imme- 
diately on the return of the rains. 2 
1 A knowledge of this fact was 2 For a similar fact relative to 
turned to prompt account by Mr. the shells and water beetles in the 
Edgar S. Layard, when holding pools near Bio Janeiro, see Dak- 
a judicial office at Point Pedro in win's Nat. Journal, ch. v. p. 99. 
1849. A native who had been de- Benson, in the first vol. of Glean- 
frauded of his land complained ings of Science, published at Cal- 
before him of his neighbour, who, cutta in 1829, describes a species 
during his absence, had removed of Paludina found in pools, which 
their common landmark, divert- are periodically dried up in the 
ing the original watercourse and hot season but reappear with the 
obliterating its traces by filling it rains, p. 363. And in the Journal 
up to a level with the rest of the of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 
field. Mr. Layard directed a for Sept. 1832, Lieut Htttton, in 
trench to be sunk at the contested a singularly interesting paper, has 
spot, and discovering numbers of followed up the same subject by a 
the Ampullaria, the remains of the narrative of his own observations 
eggs, and the living animal which at Mirzapore, wherein June, 1832, 
had been buried for months, the after a few heavy showers of rain, 
evidence was so resistless as to that formed pools on the surface 
confound the wrong-doer, and ter- of the ground near a mango grove, 
ruinate the suit. he saw the Paludince issuing from 
A A 2 
