Footnote 3531: [(return)]
See Paper "on some Species of Fishes and Reptiles in Demerara," by J. HANDCOCK, Esq., M.D., Zoological Journal, vol. iv. p. 243.
Footnote 3532: [(return)]
A curious account of the borachung or "ground fish" of Bhootan, will be found in Note (C.) appended to this chapter.
Footnote 3551: [(return)]
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, diverting the original watercourse and obliterating its traces by filling it up 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 wrong-doer, and terminate the suit.
Footnote 3552: [(return)]
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. 99. 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 Society 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, wherein June, 1832, after a few heavy showers of rain, that formed pools on the surface of the ground near a mango grove, he saw the Paludinæ issuing from the ground, "pushing aside the moistened earth and coming forth from their retreats; but on the disappearance of the water not one of them was to be seen above ground. Wishing to ascertain what had become of them he turned up the earth at the base of several trees, and invariably found the shells buried from an inch to two inches below the surface." Lieut. Hutton adds that the Ampullariæ and Planorbes, as well as the Paludinæ are found in similar situations during the heats of the dry season. The British Pisidea exibit the same faculty (see a monograph in the Camb. Phil. Trans. vol. iv.). The fact is elsewhere alluded to in the present work of the power possessed by the land leech of Ceylon of retaining vitality even after being parched to hardness during the heat of the rainless season. LYELL mentions the instance of some snails in Italy which, when they hybernate, descend to the depth of five feet and more below the surface. Princip. of Geology, &c, p. 373.
Footnote 3561: [(return)]
HUNTER'S Observations on parts of the Animal Oeconomy, p. 88.
Footnote 3562: [(return)]
Centetes ecaudatus, Illiger.
Footnote 3571: [(return)]
Annals of Natural History, 1860. See Dr. BAIRD'S Account of Helix desertorum; Excelsior, &c., ch. i. p. 345.
Footnote 3572: [(return)]
Colonel SKYES has described in the Entomological Trans. the operations of an ant in India which lays up a store of hay against the rainy season.
Footnote 3581: [(return)]
YARRELL, vol. i. p. 364, quotes the authority of Dr. J. Hunter in his Animal Oeconomy, that fish, "after being frozen still retain so much of life as when thawed to resume their vital actions;" and in-the same volume (Introd. vol. i. p. xvii.) he relates from JESSE'S Gleanings in Natural History, the story of a gold fish (Cyprinus auratus), which, together with the a marble basin, was frozen into one solid lump of ice, yet, on the water being thawed, the fish became as lively as usual. Dr. RICHARDSON in the third vol of his Fauna Borealis Americana, says the grey sucking carp, found in the fur countries of North America, may be frozen and thawed again without being killed in the process.
Footnote 3582: [(return)]
See SIR J. EMERSON TENNET's Ceylon, &c., vol. ii. p. 496.