to be an Anabas, and closely resembles the
_Perca scandens_ of Daldorf.

[Illustration: THE ANABAS OF THE DRY TANKS]

But the faculty of becoming torpid at such periods is not confined in
Ceylon to the crocodiles and fishes, it is equally possessed by some of
the fresh-water mollusca and aquatic coleoptera. The largest 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. There it deposits a bundle of
eggs with a white calcareous shell, to the number of one hundred and
more in each group, at a considerable depth in the soft mud, under
which, when the water is about to evaporate during the dry season, it
burrows and conceals itself[1] till the returning rains restore it to
liberty, and reproduce its accustomed food. 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 immediately on the return of the rains.[2]

[Footnote 1: A knowledge of this fact was turned to prompt account by
Mr. Edgar S. Layard, when holding a judicial office at Point Pedro in
1849. A native who had been defrauded of his land complained before him
of his neighbour, who, during his absence, had removed their common
landmark by diverting the original watercourse and obliterated its
traces by filling it to a level with the rest of the field. Mr. Layard
directed a trench to be sunk at the contested spot, and discovering
numbers of the Ampullaria, the remains of the eggs, and the living
animal which had been buried for months, the evidence was so resistless
as to confound the wrongdoer, and terminate the suit.]

[Footnote 2: For a similar fact relative to the shells and water beetles
in the pools near Rio Janeiro, see DARWIN'S _Nat. Journal_, ch. v. p.
90. BENSON, in the first vol. of _Gleanings of Science_, published at
Calcutta in 1829, describes a species of _Paludina_ found in pools,
which are periodically dried up in the hot season but reappear with the
rains, p. 363. And in the _Journal of the Asiatic Soc. of Bengal_ for
Sept. 1832, Lieut. HUTTON, in a singularly interesting paper, has
followed up the same subject by a narrative of his own observations at
Mirzapore, where in June, 1832, after a few heavy showers of rain