Part 9

"Many of your readers might, perhaps, like to see the facts connected with this phenomenon. They will be better understood in the words of the principal witness, as taken down by me on the spot where it happened. This man's name is John Lewis, a sawyer in Messrs Nixon and Co.'s yard. His evidence is as follows:--'On Wednesday, February 9, I was getting out a piece of timber for the purpose of setting it for the saw, when I was startled by something falling all over me--down my neck, on my head, and on my back. On putting my hand down my neck I was surprised to find they were little fish. By this time I saw the whole ground covered with them. I took off my hat, the brim of which was full of them. They were jumping all about. They covered the ground in a long strip of about eighty yards by twelve, as we measured afterwards. That shed (pointing to a very large workshop) was covered with them, and the shoots were quite full of them. My mates and I might have gathered bucketfuls of them, scraping with our hands. We did gather a great many, about a bucketful, and threw them into the rain-pool, where some of them now are. There were two showers, with an interval of about ten minutes, and each shower lasted about two minutes or thereabouts. The time was eleven A.M. The morning up-train to Aberdare was just then passing. It was not blowing very hard, but uncommon wet, just about the same wind as there is to-day (blowing rather stiff), and it came from this quarter (pointing to the S. of W.). They came down with the rain in "a body, like."' Such is the evidence. I have taken it for the purpose of being laid before Professor Owen, to whom, also, I shall send to-morrow, at the request of a friend of his, eighteen or twenty of the little fish. Three of them are large and very stout, measuring about four inches. The rest are small. There were some--but they are since dead--fully five inches long. They are very lively.--Your obedient servant,

"JOHN GRIFFITH, "Vicar of Aberdare and Rural Dean. "VICARAGE, ABERDARE, _March 8_."

The specimens which were forwarded to Professor Owen were exhibited in a tank at the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park: they consisted of minnows (_Leuciscus phoxinus_) and Smooth-tailed sticklebacks (_Gasterosteus leiurus_.) A _savant_ thus endeavoured to "enlighten" the uninitiated on the matter:--"On reading the evidence it appears to me most probably only a practical joke of the mates of John Lewis, who seem to have thrown a pailful of water with the fish in it over him, and he appears to have returned them to the pool from which they were originally taken. The fish forwarded are very unlike those taken up in whirlwinds in tropical countries, and we must make allowance for unintentional exaggerations of quantity, &c., in an account given a month after the event had occurred."

This "appears to me" a beautiful example of critical acumen. My readers will do well to look at it for a moment; as they may thus learn how to sift the grain of truth out of the bushel of chaff. _Reverentèr procedamus!_

The main (is it not the only?) objection to the honest sawyer's statement is that "the fish are very unlike those taken up in whirlwinds in tropical countries." That is, that, seeing the phenomenon occurs in Great Britain, it is most unfortunate that the fishes are British species. Now, in India, when such things occur, it is always _Indian_ species that are taken up; _ergo_, it ought to be Indian species _here_. But these are "very unlike" the Indian fishes; _ergo_, it is manifestly a humbug.

Then, does it not strike one as palpably probable, when once one's dull intellect has been "enlightened" by the brilliant suggestion,--that the worthy sawyer who had a pail of water soused upon him, thought it was a heavy shower of rain? _Very_ heavy, no doubt; indeed he says it was "uncommon wet." To be sure, he thought there were _two_ showers, each lasting about two minutes, with an interval of ten minutes between them; but this little error might be easily made, for doubtless a bucket of water poured on one's head might well be equivalent to two showers of rain, or even ten, for that matter. To be sure, moreover, there was a considerable quantity of fish:--"The whole ground was covered with them: they were jumping all about: they covered the ground in a long strip of about eighty yards by twelve, _as we measured_ afterwards: the shed was covered with them, and the shoots were quite full of them.... My mates and I might have gathered bucketfuls of them: we did gather about a bucketful." Yes, yes: but all were originally in the pail of water thrown over you, John. How stupid you were, not to perceive _that_! How there was room for any water at all in the pail, seeing there were so many fish, you say you don't know; but that is your stupidity, John! There _must_ have been room for water, for it was "uncommon wet;" and the water was in the pail, for the Doctor says so. Uncommon fishy, too, I should think; but let that pass. Where the mates collected the pail of live fishes for their pleasant and profitable hoax, and how, and when,--the sceptic might wonderingly ask; but a hoax it was. _Ipse dixit._

However, the verdict did not obtain universal assent; and an excellent and well-known naturalist, Mr Robert Drave, residing in the vicinity, ventured modestly to indicate a dissent. "I think actual fact will excuse the otherwise apparently unbecoming assumption in me, of opposing such high authority by a contrary opinion, for from information _obtained from many sources, and very careful and minute_ inquiry, I am quite convinced that a great number of fish did actually descend with rain _over a considerable tract of country_. The specimens I obtained _from three individuals_, resident some distance from each other, were of two species, the common minnow and the three-spined stickleback; the former most abundant, and mostly very small, though some had attained their full size."[76]

If now we look to other lands, we shall find that the descent of fishes from the atmosphere, under conditions little understood, is a phenomenon which rests on indubitable evidence. Humboldt has published interesting details of the ejection of fish in large quantities from volcanoes in South America. On the night between the 19th and 20th of June, 1698, the summit of Carguairazo, a volcano more than 19,000 feet in height, fell in, and all the surrounding country for nearly thirty-two square miles was covered with mud and fishes. A similar eruption of fish from the volcano of Imbaburu was supposed to have been the cause of a putrid fever which raged in the town of Ibarra seven years before that period.

These facts are not inexplicable. Subterraneous lakes, communicating with surface-waters, form in deep cavities in the declivities, or at the base of a volcano. In certain active stages of ignition, these internal cavities are burst open, and their contents discharged through the crater. Humboldt ascertained that the fishes in question belonged to a curious and ill-favoured species of the _Siluridæ_,--the _Pimelodes Cyclopum_.

Showers of fishes, however, do occur, which cannot be connected with volcanic agency. Dr Buist, in an interesting paper published in the _Bombay Times_ in 1856, has collected a number of authentic examples of this phenomenon. The author, after enumerating the cases just cited, and others of similar character, 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 Daccah 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, as far as I know, found in the higher parts of the island. I have never seen them, though I have watched carefully, in casks collecting water from the roofs of buildings, or heard of them on the decks or awnings of vessels in the harbour, where they must have appeared had they descended from the sky. One of the most remarkable phenomena of this kind occurred during a tremendous deluge of rain at Kattywar, on the 25th of July 1850, when the ground around Rajkote was found literally covered with fish; some of them were found on the top of haystacks, where probably they had been drifted by the storm. In the course of twenty-four successive hours twenty-seven inches of rain fell, thirty-five fell in twenty-six hours, seven inches in one hour and a-half, being the heaviest fall on record. At Poonah, on the 3d of August 1852, after a very heavy fall of rain, multitudes of fish were caught on the ground in the 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."

Sir E. Tennent adds the following examples:--"I had an opportunity, on one occasion only, of witnessing the phenomenon which gives rise to this popular belief. I was driving in the cinnamon gardens near the fort of Colombo, and saw a violent but partial shower descend at no great distance before me. On coming to the spot, I found a multitude of small silvery fish from one and a half to two inches in length, leaping on the gravel of the high road, numbers of which I collected and brought away in my palankin. The spot was about half a mile from the sea, and entirely unconnected with any watercourse or pool.

"Mr Whiting, who was many years resident at Trincomalee, writes me that he 'had been often told by the natives on that side of the island that it sometimes rained fishes; and on one occasion (he adds) I was taken by them, in 1849, to a field at the village of Karrancotta-tivo, near Batticaloa, which was dry when I passed over it in the morning, but had been covered in two hours by sudden rain to the depth of three inches, in which there was then a quantity of small fish. The water had no connexion with any pond or stream whatsoever.' Mr Cripps, in like manner, in speaking of Galle, says: 'I have seen in the vicinity of the fort, fish taken from rain-water that had accumulated in the hollow parts of the land that in the hot season are perfectly dry and parched. The place is accessible to no running stream or tank; and either the fish, or the spawn from which they were produced, must of necessity have fallen with the rain.'"[77]

Mr J. Prinsep, the eminent secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, found a fish in the pluviometer at Calcutta, in 1838.[78]

It is a highly curious fact that the pools, reservoirs, and tanks in India and Ceylon are well provided with fish of various species, though the water twice every year becomes perfectly evaporated, and the mud of the bottom becomes converted into dust, or takes the condition of baked clay, gaping with wide and deep clefts, in which not the slightest sign of moisture can be detected. This is the case with temporary hollows in the soil, which have no connexion with running streams or permanent waters, from which they might be supposed to receive a fresh stock of fish.

Two modes of accounting for this strange phenomenon have obtained currency. The one is that received by those Europeans who are content with any solution of a difficulty, without too closely testing it; viz., that the fishes fall with the rains from the air. The actual occurrence of such showers rests, as we have just seen, on good evidence; but, admitting the fact, it must be a rare phenomenon, whereas the presence of fish in the new-made pools is universal. Again, if the rains brought them in such abundance as to stock all the pools, an equal number would fall on the dry ground, which is not pretended to be the case. The other accepted solution is that which has received the sanction of Mr Yarrell, who observes--"The impregnated ova of the fish of one rainy season are left unhatched in the mud through the dry season, and from their low state of organisation _as ova_, the vitality is preserved till the occurrence and contact of the rain and the oxygen of the next wet season, when vivification takes place from their joint influence."[79]

This may be fully allowed, yet it does not meet the exigences of the case. Sir E. Tennent and others have shewn that it is not young fishes just escaped from the egg which appear in the new-formed pools, but full-grown fishes, fit for the market; a fact well known to the Singalese fishermen, who resort to the hollows as soon as the monsoon has brought rain; and they invariably take in these pools, which a day or two before were as dry as dust, plenty of fishes fully grown, a foot or eighteen inches long, or longer.

Neither of these hypotheses, then, will account for the fact: and we must admit that the fishes of these regions have the instinct to burrow down in the solid mud of the bottom, at the approach of the dry season, and the power of retaining life, doubtless in a torpid condition, until the return of the periodic rains, as Theophrastus long ago observed.[80]

The _Lepidosiren_, a very remarkable genus of animals from Africa and South America, affords a curious illustration of this power. It is altogether a highly singular creature, and has attracted a great deal of notice because its organisation belongs to two types: it is, so to speak, placed midway between the great classes of Reptiles and Fishes, the characters which identify it with either being almost equally balanced. Professor Owen and other eminent physiologists regard it as a fish, while Professor Bischoff, with others equally learned, consider it an Amphibian reptile.

It is the habits of this strange creature, however, which induce me to notice it here. An inhabitant of rivers and ponds, which are swollen by periodic rains, and subject to entire or partial desiccation by long droughts, it is liable to be left by the retreating waters, exposed to the burning sun, under which it would presently die, but for a special provision.

The animal has the instinct to bury itself in the mud of the bottom, on the approach of the droughts, penetrating to a depth of several feet. There it coils itself into a ball, with the tail folded over the nose, but so as to leave the nasal apertures uncovered; and, probably by its wrigglings, it forms a cavity or chamber in the clay, which becomes lined with a membranous slough thrown off from its body. Meanwhile the water evaporates, the mud dries, bakes, and cracks under the torrid heat of the dry season, thus allowing air to penetrate down to the retreat of the torpid mud-fish, in sufficient quantity for its very sluggish respiration. Here it lies inactive for five or six months, until the wet season again sets in, and the returning floods cover the old beds, soften the baked clay, revivify the imprisoned animal, and restore it to liberty and aquatic locomotion.

To meet these strange conditions of life, the _Lepidosiren_ is furnished with a twofold apparatus for respiration; the one aquatic, consisting of gills, ordinarily contained in a branchial chamber, (but in one species, at least, external,) suited for the separation of oxygen from the water, and the other aerial, consisting of true lungs, closely resembling those of serpents, though manifestly only a modification of the well-known swim-bladder of many fishes,--by means of which the animal breathes atmospheric air, during its periodic captivity.

The same emergency is met by other species in another way. It does not appear that the _Lepidosiren_ has the power of voluntarily forsaking the water, or of travelling on land, notwithstanding its twofold respiration; but some of the fishes of the tropics certainly resort to this mode of evading the fatal contingency of being baked out by the evaporating power of the periodical dry season.

Theophrastus, the contemporary of Aristotle, mentions fishes found in the Euphrates which in the dry seasons leave the vacant channels and crawl over the ground in search of water, moving along by fins and tail.[81] Pallegoix gives three kinds of fish in Siam, which leave the tanks and channels and travel through the grass;[82] and Sir John Bowring states that in ascending the river Meinam to Bangkok, he was amused with the sight of fish leaving the stream, gliding over the wet banks, till they disappeared among the trees of the jungle.[83] The _Hydragyræ_ of Carolina in like manner leave the drying pools, and seek the nearest water in a straight line, though at a considerable distance. And Sir R. Schomburgk tells us that certain species of _Dora_ in Guiana have the same habit, and are occasionally met with in such numbers in their terrestrial travels that the negroes fill baskets with them.[84]

These fishes, provincially called Hassars, project themselves on their bony pectoral fins, aiding their advance by the elastic spring of the tail exerted sidewise, proceeding in this manner nearly as fast as a man can walk. The strong scaly bands which envelop the body facilitate the march, in the same way as the transverse plates (_scuta_) on the belly of serpents, which take hold of the ground, as the ribs perform the office of feet. The Indians know that these fishes have the power of carrying a supply of water in a reservoir, for the keeping of the gills in a moist condition. If they fail in finding water, they are said to burrow in the still soft mud, and pass the dry season in torpidity like the _Lepidosiren_.

The common eel is well known to have this habit of travelling with us; I well remember my surprise, when a boy, at finding an eel in a grassy meadow one dewy summer evening, at a considerable distance from water. Since then I have seen a small species of _Antennarius_, running quickly to and fro on the surface of the great beds of floating sea-weed in the Gulf stream, progressing by means of its pectorals and ventrals quite out of water, with the utmost facility.

The most celebrated example of this faculty, however, is the climbing perch (_Anabas scandens_) of India. The vagaries of this little fish have been recorded from the earliest times, and numerous modern witnesses have borne record to its powers. Mr E. Layard once encountered several travelling along a hot dusty gravel-road in the mid-day sun.[85] Daldorf, a Danish zoologist of reputation, asserts that he has seen this species in the act of climbing palm-trees, effecting its ascent by means of fins and tail, with the aid of its spinous gill-covers. There is, however, some doubt whether he was not under mistake in this, though the fact of its crawling up the banks and living out of water is abundantly known.

On the coasts of Ceylon, according to its accomplished historian,--on the rocks which are washed by the surf, there are multitudes of a curious little fish, (_Salarias alticus_,) which possesses the faculty of darting along the surface of the water, and running up the wet stones, with the utmost ease and rapidity. By aid of its pectoral and ventral fins and gill-cases, it moves across the damp sand, ascends the roots of the mangroves, and climbs up the smooth face of the rocks in search of flies; adhering so securely as not to be detached by repeated assaults of the waves. These little creatures are so nimble, that it is almost impossible to lay hold of them, as they scramble to the edge, and plunge into the sea on the slightest attempt to molest them. They are from three to four inches in length, and of a dark-brown colour, almost indistinguishable from the rocks they frequent.[86]

In all these cases probably, the power of sustaining a protracted privation of water depends on a peculiar structure of the pharynx, which is divided by membranous plates into cells which the fish can fill at pleasure with water, and by ejecting small portions at a time can moisten its gills, and thus preserve the filaments of these organs in a fit condition to maintain the circulation and oxygenation of the blood. These labyrinthal water-chambers are particularly numerous and complicated in the _Anabas_ just mentioned. This, however, has no analogy with the lung of the _Lepidosiren_.

[70] _Mag. Nat. Hist._, ii. 322.

[71] From the _Times_ of Jan. 24, 1861.

[72] The _Oscillatoria_ is a genus of _plants_; it is a microscopic _Alga_ of wire-like form belonging to the great Confervoid family, having the remarkable peculiarity of spontaneous and apparently voluntary motion.

[73] Latrobe's _Alpenstock_, p. 12.

[74] Seemann's _Isthmus of Panama_.

[75] I am indebted for this note to the Rev. Leonard Jenyns. See his edition of White's _Selborne_, (1843) p. 66.

[76] _Zoologist_, pp. 6541, 6564.

[77] _Ceylon_, i. 211.

[78] _Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal_, vi. 465.

[79] _Brit. Fishes_, i. xxvii. Aristotle had long before given the same explanation.

[80] _De Pisc. in siceo degent._

[81] _De Piscibus._

[82] _Siam_, i. 144.

[83] _Emb. to Siam_, i. 10.

[84] _Fishes of Guiana_, i. 113.

[85] _Annals N. H._, _May 1853_.

[86] Tennent's _Ceylon_, ii. 498.

III.

MERMAIDS.

According to Berosus there came up from the Red Sea, on the shore contiguous to Babylonia, a brute creature named Oannes, which had the body of a fish, above whose front parts rose the head of a man; it had two human feet, which projected from each side of the tail; it had also a human voice and human language. This strange monster sojourned among the rude people during the day, taking no food, but retiring to the sea again at night; and continued for some time, teaching them the arts of civilised life. Other ancient authors, as Polyhistor and Apollodorus, allude to the same tradition; and we gather that the portrait of the learned stranger (not painted _from the life_, we may presume, considering the condition of the people when he appeared, unless we may suppose it to have been the effort of one of his pupils in the pictorial art under his instruction) was preserved at Babylon to the historic period.