LARVAE, ETC., OF OPHIOCEPHALUS STRIATUS. 109 
ing by the runway which it provides. A favourite position is for the 
fish to lie in the runway with its head projecting over the nest. It 
usually remains in the shaded side of the nest, but appears occa¬ 
sionally in bright sunlight, so that it can be seen quite a distance 
away.” 
The similar habits of “ lula ” and the existence of runways to and 
from the nests are known to some of the natives of this country, who 
utilize the knowledge for the purpose of capturing the fish during 
the breeding seasons. They say that whilst watching over its eggs 
and fry, “ lula ” will not take the bait and can only be caught by the 
kuda. This is a small basket of deep conical form and wide mesh, 
about 20 inches long, ending blindly at the narrow end, opening 
like a funnel at the wide end, just large enough to receive the body 
of the fish, which, once inside, cannot withdraw. At Minneriya 
these lula-kudu are made by a cunning old descendant of the Veddas, 
named Sirataweli, and they are also used at Topawewa. (Text 
figure.) 
On February 21 last Sirataweli accompanied me, wading through 
part of Minneri tank, in search of nests of “ lula.” Five nests were 
found, of which two were empty, two others contained a swarm 
of fry in each, while one contained floating eggs and very young fry 
intermingled with Lemna and with fragments of vegetation detached 
from the neighbouring plants and likewise floating on the top.. One 
of the nests containing a swarm of fry, situated behind, a tussock 
of grass under the shade of some bushes, apparently belonged to 
“ madaru” or “ mada-karaya ” (0. punctatus), and not to “ lula.” 
On May 28 a man brought some “ lula ” eggs to me, which he had 
taken from a nest amongst the rushes in the Hunupitiya arm of the 
Colombo Lake. I waded out to this nest and again saw the charac¬ 
teristic translucent golden yellow or amber-coloured eggs, some 
newly hatched, spread like a sheet, flush with the surface in a sub- 
circular area behind a tussock of rushes which partly served to 
filter the direct rays of the sun. Amongst and around the eggs 
were scattered the usual detached fragments of herbage, consisting 
chiefly of small leaves of aquatic plants. I did not see the adults, 
but the man said that both parents had been near the nest, the 
smaller of the two aggressively protecting it; he called this one 
the female, possibly not knowing that amongst fishes the male is 
smaller than the female. 
At a little distance from the ‘ ‘ lula ” nest just described there was a 
swarm of “ mada-karaya” fry. A few days later (June 3) another 
batch of the same kind of eggs was brought to me from Hunupitiya, but 
the finder said that they were “ mada-karaya ” eggs, and he brought 
a dead fish of this species along with him to prove his point. They 
had the same diameter, about 1*25 mm., as the “ lula ” eggs, and the 
subsequent stages were those of the development of “ lula.” I con¬ 
clude therefore that I have not yet seen the spawn of ‘ ‘ mada-karaya,” 
