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 Rio Janeiro, see Dar- 



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 Hutton, 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 Faludincs issuing from 



A A 2 



