ygians_,
which appear to be _Bagri_.

[Footnote 1: Of the fresh-water fishes belonging to the family
Cyprinidae, there are about eighteen species from Ceylon in the
collection of the British Museum.]

[Footnote 2: This fish bears the native name of _Theliya_ in Major
Skinner's list; and is described by Colonel Hamilton Smith as being "of
the proportions of an eel; beautifully mottled, with eyes and spots of a
lighter olive upon a dark green." This so nearly corresponds with a fish
of the same name, _Theliya_, which was brought to Gronovius from Ceylon,
and proved to be identical with the _Aral_ of the Coromandel coast, that
it may be doubtful whether it be not the individual already noted by
Cuvier as _Rhyncobdella ocellata_, Cuv. and Val. viii. 445.]

In this collection, brought together without premeditation, the
naturalist will be struck by the preponderance of those genera which are
adapted by nature to endure a temporary privation of moisture; and this,
taken in connection with the vicissitudes affecting the waters they
inhabit, exhibits a surprising illustration of the wisdom of the Creator
in adapting the organisation of His creatures to the peculiar
circumstances under which they are destined to exist.

So abundant are fish in all parts of the island, that Knox says, not the
running streams alone, but the reservoirs and ponds, "nay, every ditch
and little plash of water but ankle deep hath fish in it."[1] But many
of these reservoirs and tanks are, twice in each year, liable to be
evaporated to dryness till the mud of the bottom is converted into dust,
and the clay cleft by the heat into gaping apertures. Yet within a very
few days after the change of the monsoon, the natives are busily engaged
in fishing in those very spots and in the hollows contiguous to them,
although entirely unconnected with any pool or running streams; in the
way in which Knox described nearly 200 years ago, with a funnel-shaped
basket, open at bottom and top, which, as he says, they "jibb down, and
the end sticks in the mud, which often happens upon a fish; which, when
they feel beating itself against the sides, they put in their hands and
take it out, and reive a ratan through their gills, and so let them drag
after them."[2]

[Footnote 1: KNOX'S _Historical Relation of Ceylon_, Part 1. ch. vii.
The occurrence of fish in the most unlooked-for situations, is one of
the mysteries of other eastern countries as well as Ceylon and India