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
_Hydragyrae_ 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.
[Illustration: THE CLIMBING PERCH.]
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.
In an elaborate sculpture of the later Assyrian period, discovered by M.
Botta at Khorsabad, a maritime expedition is portrayed, and the sea
around the ships is filled with various marine animals, and among them
the compound mythic forms of winged bulls and bull-lions, in which the
Assyrians delighted, together with a figure composed of the body and
tail of a fish extended horizontally, and the perpendicular trunk and
foreparts of a man, crowned with the sacred cap, possibly representing
the traditional Oannes.
The god Dagon of the Philistines, and the goddess Atergatis of the
Syrians were worshipped under the same combination of the human and
piscine forms, and the Tritons of classical mythology perpetuated the
idea.
It is curious that in almost all ages and in almost all countries there
should have prevailed a belief in the actual living existence of
creatures like this. Was the mythological symbol the origin of the
persuasion? Or is there any marine animal uniting so much of the general
form of the fish with that of man as to have given the conception of the
idol? A naturalist of deserved eminence has maintained, on purely
scientific grounds, that such an animal must exist,--that the laws of
nature absolutely require such a being; and though the amount of force
which his reasoning, possesses will be estimated differently according
as we reject or accept the hypothesis of the circularity of the great
plan of nature, we may as well see what he has to say for a marine
primate,--be he man or ape, mermaid or mermonkey.
"There is yet," says Mr Swainson, "another primary type necessary to
complete the circle of the quadrumanous animals, and it is that which we
have elsewhere distinguished as the natatorial; but of such an animal we
have only vague and indefinite accounts. It will be seen that,
throughout the whole class of quadrupeds, the aquatic types are
remarkably few, and in general scarce; and that they contain fewer forms
or examples than any other, and are often, in the smaller groups,
entirely wanting. To account for this is altogether impossible; we can
only call attention to the fact, as exemplified in the aquatic order of
_Cetacea_, in that of the _Ferae_, in the _Pachydermata_, in the circle
of the _Glires_, and in all the remaining natatorial types of the
different circles of quadrupeds. We do not implicitly believe in the
existence of mermaids as described and depicted by the old writers--with
a comb in the one hand and a mirror in the other; but it is difficult to
imagine that the numerous records of singular marine animals, unlike any
of those well known, have their origin in fraud or gross ignorance. Many
of these narratives are given by eye-witnesses of the facts they vouch
for--men of honesty and probity, having no object to gain by deception,
and whose accounts have been confirmed by other witnesses equally
trustworthy. Can it be supposed that the unfathomable depths of ocean
are without their _peculiar_ inhabitants, whose habits and economy
rarely, if ever, bring them to the surface of the watery element? As
reasonably might a Swiss mountaineer disbelieve in the existence of an
ostrich, because it cannot inhabit his Alpine precipices, as that we
should doubt that the rocks and caverns of the ocean are without animals
destined to live in such situations, and such only. The natatorial type
of the _Quadrumana_, however, is most assuredly wanting. Whatever its
precise construction may or might have been, it would represent and
correspond to the seals in the circle of the _Ferae_, or rapacious
quadrupeds; while a resemblance to the _Simiadae_, or monkeys, must be
considered an essential character of any marine animal which is to
connect and complete the circular series of types in the _Quadrumana_."
Mr Swainson absolutely excludes Man from the zoological circle, on
grounds which few naturalists are disposed to think sufficient; else we
might suggest that man himself is the natatorial type of the _Primates_.
Taking this author's own selection[87] of the characters which mark the
natatorial types of animals, for our guide, we find that the largest
size, the smallest fore-limbs, the most obtuse muzzle, the most
carnivorous appetite, and the most natatory habits (for I do not know
that the Apes, or the Sapajous, or the Lemurs, or the Bats, ever take to
the water voluntarily, whereas savage Man is always a great swimmer),
belong to Man, and so, _Swainsonio ipso judice_, constitute _him_ the
true aquatic primate. But if so, we do not want a merman or mermonkey;
nay, we should not know where to insert him in the zoological circle if
we found him; he would be awkwardly _de trop_.
But yet nature _has_ an awkward way of mocking at our impossibilities;
and it _may be_ that green-haired maidens with oary tails lurk in the
ocean caves, and keep mirrors and combs upon their rocky shelves.
Certainly the belief in them is very widely spread, and occasionally
comes to us from quarters where we should hardly have looked for it. A
negro from Dongola assured Prince Puckler Muskau that in the country of
Sennaar there was no doubt that Sirens (mermaids) still existed, for
that he himself had seen more than one.[88]
In my boyhood I well recollect being highly excited by the arrival in
our town, at fair-time, of a "show," which professed to exhibit a
mermaid, whose portrait, on canvas hung outside, was radiant in feminine
loveliness and piscine scaliness. I fondly expected to see the very
counterpart within, how disposed I did not venture to imagine, but alive
and fascinating, of course. Had I not seen her picture? I joyfully paid
my coppers, but oh! woful disappointment! I dimly saw, within a dusty
glass case, in a dark corner, a shrivelled and blackened little thing
which might have been moulded in mud for aught I could see, but which
was labelled, "MERMAID!" So great was my disgust, so bitter my feelings
of shame and anger at having been so grossly taken in, that I did not
care to observe what might have been noteworthy in it. I read afterwards
that it was a very ingenious cheat; the trunk and head of a monkey had
been grafted on to the body and tail of a large salmon-like fish, and
the junction had been so cleverly effected, that only a very close
examination detected the artifice. It professed to have been brought
from China, but possibly was an importation even thither, if Steinmetz
is correct. According to this writer, "A Japanese fisherman contrived to
unite the upper half of a monkey to the lower half of a fish, so neatly
as to defy ordinary inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the
creature alive in his net, but that it had died shortly after being
taken out of the water; and he derived considerable pecuniary profit
from his cunning in more ways than one. The exhibition of the
sea-monster to Japanese curiosity paid well; but yet more productive was
the assertion that the half-human fish, having spoken the few minutes it
existed out of its native element, had predicted a certain number of
years of wonderful fertility, and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for
which would be possession of the marine prophet's likeness. The sale of
these pictured mermaids was immense. Either this composite animal, or
another, the offspring of the success of the first, was sold at the
Dutch factory, and transmitted to Batavia, where it fell into the hands
of a speculating American, who brought it to Europe, and here, in the
years 1822-3, exhibited his purchase as a real mermaid at every capital,
to the admiration of the ignorant, the perplexity of the learned, and
the filling of his own purse. Indeed, the mermaids exhibited in Europe
and America, to the great profit of the enterprising showmen, have all
been of Japanese manufacture."[89]
This, however, will not account for the frequent reports of the living
creatures having been seen, and unbelievers have to form some other
hypothesis. In the tropical seas the cow-whales, uncouth marine
_pachydermata_, have been assumed to be the originals of these stories.
Megasthenes reported that the sea which washed Taprobane, the modern
Ceylon, was inhabited by a creature having the appearance of a woman;
and AElian improves the account by stating that there are whales having
the form of satyrs. 'Tis true the Manatee and the Dugong are rather
mer-swine than mer-maids; but there is something in the bluff round head
which may remind a startled observer of the human form divine. Sir
Emerson Tennent considers that this rude approach to the human outline,
and the attitude of the mother while suckling her young, pressing it to
her breast with one paw, while swimming with the other, the head of both
being held perpendicularly above water, and then, when disturbed,
suddenly diving and displaying her broad fin-like tail,--these, together
with her habitual demonstrations of strong maternal affection, may
probably have been the original from which the pictures of the mermaid
were portrayed, and thus that earliest invention of mythical physiology
may be traced to the Arab seamen and to the Greeks, who had watched the
movements of the Dugong in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.