358 
FISHES. 
[Chap. X. 
those at home, subsist upon insects, but as they inhabit 
a region where the equable temperature admits of the 
pursuit of their prey at all seasons of the year, unlike 
those of Europe, they never hybernate. A similar ob- 
servation applies to bats, which are dormant during a 
northern winter when insects are rare, but never become 
torpid in any part of the tropics. The bear, in like 
manner, is nowhere deprived of its activity except when 
the rigour of severe frost cuts off its access to its accus- 
tomed food. On the other hand, the tortoise, which in 
Venezuela immerses itself in indurated mud during the 
hot months shows no tendency to torpor in Ceylon, 
where its food is permanent ; and yet it is subject to hy- 
bernation when carried to the colder regions of Europe. 
To the fish in the detached tanks and pools when the 
heat, by exhausting the water, deprives them at once of 
motion and sustenance, the practical effect must be the 
same as when the frost of a northern winter encases 
them in ice. JSTor is it difficult to believe that they can 
successfully undergo the one crisis when we know beyond 
question that they may survive the other. 1 
Hot-water Fishes. — Another incident is striking in 
connection with the fresh- water fishes of Ceylon. I have 
described elsewhere the hot springs of Kannea 2 , in the 
1 Yarrele, vol. i. p. 364, quotes into one solid lump of ice, yet, on 
the authority of Dr. J. Hunter in the water being thawed, the fish 
his Animal (Economy, that fish, became as lively as usual. Dr. 
" after being frozen still retain so Kichardson, in the third vol. of 
much of life as when thawed to his Fauna Borealis Americana, 
resume their vital actions ;" and says the grey sucking carp, found 
in the same volume (Introd. vol. i. in the fur countries of North 
p. xvii.) he relates from Jesse's America, may be frozen and thawed 
Gleanings in Natural History, the again without being killed in the 
story of a gold fish (Cyprinus process. 
auratus), which, together with the 2 See Sir J. Emerson Tennent's 
water in a marble basin, was frozen Ceylon, &c, vol. ii. p. 496. 
