cantonments, full half a mile from the nearest stream. If showers of
fish are to be explained on the assumption that they are carried up by
squalls or violent winds, from rivers or spaces of water not far away
from where they fall, it would be nothing wonderful were they seen to
descend from the air during the furious squalls which occasionally occur
in June."

* * * * *

NOTE (B.)

MIGRATION OF FISHES OVER LAND.

_Opinions of the Greeks and Romans_.

It is an illustration of the eagerness with which, after the expedition
of Alexander the Great, particulars connected with the natural history
of India were sought for and arranged by the Greeks, that in the works
both of ARISTOTLE and THEOPHRASTUS the facts are recorded of the fishes
in the Indian rivers migrating in search of water, of their burying
themselves in the mud on its failure, of their being dug out thence
alive during the dry season, and of their spontaneous reappearance on
the return of the rains. The earliest notice is in the treatise of
ARISTOTLE _De Respiratione_, chap. ix., who mentions the strange
discovery of living fish found beneath the surface of the soil, [Greek:
ton ichthuon oi polloi zosin en te ge, akinetizontes mentoi, kai
euriskontai oruttomenoi]; and in his History of Animals he conjectures
that in ponds periodically dried the ova of the fish so buried become
vivified at the change of the season.[1] HERODOTUS had previously
hazarded a similar theory to account for the sudden appearance of fry in
the Egyptian marshes on the rising of the Nile; but the cases are not
parallel. THEOPHRASTUS, the friend and pupil of Aristotle, gave
importance to the subject by devoting to it his essay [Greek: Peri tes
ton ichthyon en zero diamones], _De Piscibus in sicco degentibus_. In
this, after adverting to the fish called _exocoetus_, from its habit of
going on shore to sleep, [Greek: apo tes koites], he instances the small
fish ([Greek: ichthydia]), which leave the rivers of India to wander
like frogs on the land; and likewise a species found near Babylon,
which, when the Euphrates runs low, leave the dry channels in search of
food, "moving themselves along by means of their fins and tail." He
proceeds to state that at Heraclea Pontica there are places in which
fish are dug out of the earth, ([Greek: oryktoi ton ichthyon]), and he
accounts for their being found under such circumstances by the
subsidence of the