cessive heat in the tropics produces an effect upon animals and vegetables analogous to that of excessive cold in northern regions, and hence it is reasonable to suppose that the torpor induced by the one may be but the counterpart of the hybernation which results from the other. The frost which imprisons the alligator in the Mississippi as effectually cuts him off from food and action as the drought which incarcerates the crocodile in the sun-burnt clay of a Ceylon tank. The hedgehog of Europe enters on a period of absolute torpidity as soon as the inclemency of winter deprives it of its ordinary supply of slugs and insects; and the Tenrec1 of Madagascar, its tropical representative, exhibits the same tendency during the period when excessive heat produces in that climate a like result.

The

The descent of the Ampullaria, and other fresh-water molluscs, into the mud of the tank, has its parallel in the conduct of the Bulimi and Helices on land. European snail, in the beginning of winter, either buries itself in the earth or withdraws to some crevice or overarching stone to await the returning vegetation of spring. So, in the season of intense heat, the Helix Waltoni of Ceylon, and others of the same family, before retiring under cover, close the aperture of their shells with an impervious epiphragm, which effectually protects their moisture and juices from evaporation during the period of their æstivation. The Bulimi of Chili have been found alive in England in a box packed in cotton after an interval of two years, and the animal inhabiting a land-shell from Suez, which was attached to a tablet and deposited in the British Museum in 1846, was found in 1850 to have formed a fresh epiphragm, and on being immersed in tepid water, it emerged from its shell. It became torpid again on the 15th November, 1851, and was found dead and dried up in March, 1852.2 But the exceptions serve to prove

1 Centetes ecandatus Illiger.

Annals of Natural History, 1850.

See Dr. BAIRD's Account of Helix desertorum; Excelsior, &c. ch. i. p. 345.

the accuracy of Hunter's opinion almost as strikingly as accordances, since the same genera of animals which hibernate in Europe, where extreme cold disarranges their œconomy, evince no symptoms of lethargy in the tropics, provided their food be not diminished by the heat. Ants, which are torpid in Europe during winter, work all the year round in India, where sustenance is uniform.' The Shrews of Ceylon (Sorex montanus and S. ferrugineus of Kelaart) which, like those at home, subsist upon insects, inhabit a region where the equable temperature admits of the pursuit of their prey at all seasons of the year; and hence, unlike those of Europe, they never hibernate. A similar observation applies to the 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 accustomed food. On the other hand, the tortoise, which immerses itself in indurated mud during the hot months in Venezuela, shows no tendency to torpor in Ceylon, where its food is permanent; and yet is subject to hibernation 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. Nor is it difficult to believe that they can successfully undergo the one crisis when we know beyond question that they may survive the other.2

1 Colonel SYKES has described in the Entomological Trans. the operations of an ant which laid up a store of hay against the rainy season.

2 YARRELL, vol. i. p. 364, quotes the authority of Dr. J. Hunter in his Animal Economy, that fish "after being frozen still retain so much of

life as when thawed to resume their vital actions;" and in the same volume (Introd. vol. i. p. xvii.) he relates from JESSE's Gleanings in Natural History, the story of a gold fish (Cyprinus auratus) which, together with the water in a marble basin, was frozen into one solid lump of ice, yet,

Hot-water Fishes.-Another incident is striking in connection with the fresh-water fishes of Ceylon. I have mentioned elsewhere the hot springs of Kanea, in the vicinity of Trincomalie, the water in which flows at a temperature varying at different seasons from 85° to 115°. In the stream formed by these wells M. Reynaud found and forwarded to Cuvier two fishes which he took from the water at a time when his thermometer indicated a temperature of 37° Reaumur, equal to 115° of Fahrenheit. The one was an Apogon, the other an Ambassis, and to each, from the heat of its habitat, he assigned the specific name of " Thermalis." 1

List of Ceylon Fishes.

I. OSSEOUS.

Acanthopterygii.

Perca argentea, Bennett.
Apogon roseipinnis, Cuv. & Val.
Zeylonicus, Cuv. & Val.
thermalis, Cuv. & Val.
Ambassis thermalis, Cuv. & Val
Serranus biguttatus, Cuv. & Val.
Tankervillæ, Benn.
lemniscatus, Cuv. & Val.
Sonneratii, Cuv. & Val.
flavo-ceruleus, Lacep.
marginalis, Cuv. & Val.
Boelang, Cuv. & Vul.

on the water being thawed, the fish became as lively as usual. Dr. RICHARDSON, in the third vol. of his Fauna Borealis Americana, says the grey sucking carp, found in the fur countries of North America, may be frozen and thawed again without being killed in the process.

1 Cuv. and VAL., vol. iii. p. 363. In addition to the two fishes above named, a loche, Cobitis thermalis, and a carp, Nuria thermoicos, were found in the hot-springs of Kanea, at a heat 40° Cent., 114° Fahr., and a roach, Leuciscus thermalis, when the thermometer indicated 50° Cent., 122 Fahr. -Ib. xviii. p. 59, xvi. p. 182, xvii. p. 94. Fish have been taken from a hot spring at Pooree when the

faveatus, Cuv. & Val.
angularis, Cuv. & Val.
punctulatus, Cuv. & Val

Diacope decem-lineatus, Cuv. & Val.
spilura, Benn.

xanthopus, Cuv. & Val.

Mesoprion annularis, Cuv. & Val.
Holocentrus orientale, Cuv. & Val.
spinifera, Cuv. & Val.
argenteus, Cuv. & Val.

Upeneus tæniopterus, Cuv. & Val.
Zelonicus, Cuv. & Val.

Russeli, Cuv. & Val.
cinnabarinus, Cuv. & Val.

Platycephalus punctatus, Cuv. & Val.

thermometer stood at 112° Fahr., and as they belonged to a carnivorous genus, they must have found prey living in the same high temperature. Journ. Asiatic Soc. Beng. vol. vi. p. 465. Fishes have been observed in a hot spring at Manilla which raises the thermometer to 187°, and in another in Barbary, the usual temperature of which is 172°; and Humboldt and Bonplandt, when travelling in South America, saw fishes thrown up alive from a volcano, in water that raised the temperature to 210°, being two degrees below the boiling point. PATTERSON's Zoology, Pt. ii. p. 211; YARRELL'S History of British Fishes, vol. i. In. p. xvi.

NOTE (A.)

INSTANCES OF FISHES FALLEN FROM THE CLOUDS IN INDIA.

From the Bombay Times, 1856.

Dr. Buist, after enumerating cases in which fishes were said to have been thrown out from volcanoes in South America and precipitated from clouds in various parts of the world, adduces the following instances of similar occurrences in India. "In 1824," he says, "fishes fell at Meerut, on the men of Her Majesty's 14th Regiment, then out at drill, and were caught in numbers. In July, 1826, live fish were seen to fall on the grass at Moradabad during a storm. They were the common. cyprinus, so prevalent in our Indian waters. On the 19th of February, 1830, at noon a heavy fall of fish occurred at the Nokulhatty factory, in the Dacca zillah; depositions on the subject were obtained from nine different parties. The fish were all dead; most of them were large; some were fresh, others were rotten and mutilated. They were seen at first in the sky, like a flock of birds, descending rapidly to the ground; there was rain drizzling, but no storm. On the 16th and 17th of May, 1833, a fall of fish occurred in the zillah of Futtehpoor, about three miles north of the Jumna, after a violent storm of wind and rain. The fish were from a pound and a half to three pounds in weight, and of the same species as those found in the tanks in the neighbourhood. They were all dead and dry. A fall of fish occurred at Allahabad, during a storm in May, 1835; they were of the chowla species, and were found dead and dry after the storm had passed over the district. On the 20th of September, 1839, after a smart shower of rain, a quantity of live fish, about three inches in length and all of the same kind, fell at the Sunderbunds, about twenty miles south of Calcutta. On this occasion it was remarked that the fish did not fall here and there irregularly over the ground, but in a continuous straight line, not more than a span in breadth. The vast multitudes of fish, with which the low grounds round Bombay are covered, about a week or ten days after the first burst of the monsoon, appear to be derived from the adjoining pools or rivulets, and not to descend from the sky. They are not, so far as I know, found in the higher parts of the island. I have never seen them, though I have watched carefully, in casks