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DECEMBER, 1877.]
are found, which the husbandmen themselves catch as they swim about languidly on the surface of the water, which is no longer of a depth they can freely move in, but in fact so very shallow that it is with the utmost difficulty they can live in it at all.
THE INDIKA OF MEGASTHENES.
(13.) The following fish are also indigenous to India:-prickly roaches, which are never in any respect smaller than the asps of Argolis; and shrimps, which in India are even larger than crabs. These, I must mention, finding their way from the sea up the Ganges, have claws which are very large, and which feel rough to the touch. I have ascertained that these shrimps which pass from the Persian Gulf into the river Indus have their prickles smooth, and the feelers with which they are furnished elongated and curling, but this species has no claws.
(14.) The tortoise is found in India, where it lives in the rivers. It is of immense size, and it has a shell not smaller than a full-sized skiff (o cáp, and which is capable of holding ten medimni (120 gallons) of pulse. There are. however, also land-tortoises which may be about as big as the largest clods turned up in a rich soil where the glebe is very yielding, and the plough sinks deep, and, cleaving the furrows with ease, piles the clods up high. These are said to cast their shell. Husbandmen, and all the hands engaged in field labour, turn them up with their mattocks, and take them out just in the way one extracts wood-worms from the plants they have eaten inte. They are fat things and their flesh is sweet, having nothing of the sharp flavour of the sea-tortoise.
(15.) Intelligent animals are to be met with among ourselves, but they are few, and not at all so common as they are in India. For there we find the elephant, which answers to this character, and the parrot, and apes of the sphinx kind, and the creatures called satyrs. Nor must we forget the Indian ant, which is so noted for its wisdom. The ants of our own country do, no doubt, dig for themselves subterranean holes and burrows, and by boring provide themselves with lurking-places, and wear out all their strength in what may be called mining operations, which are indescribably toilsome and conducted with secrecy; but the Indian ants construct for themselves a cluster of tiny dwelling-houses, seated not on sloping or level grounds where they could easily be inundated, but on steep and lofty
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eminences. And in these, by boring out with untold skill certain circuitous passages which remind one of the Egyptian burial-vaults or Cretan labyrinths, they so contrive the structure of their houses that none of the lines run straight, and it is difficult for anything to enter them or flow into them, the windings and perforations being so tortuous. On the outside they leave only a single aperture to admit themselves and the grain which they collect and carry to their store-chambers. Their object in selecting lofty sites for their mansions is, of course, to escape the high floods and inundations of the rivers; and they derive this advantage from their foresight, that they live as it were in so many watch-towers or islands when the parts around the heights become all a lake. Moreover, the mounds they live in, though placed in contiguity, so far from being loosened and torn asunder by the deluge, are rather strengthened, especially by the morning dew: for they put on, so to speak, a coat of ice formed from this dew-thin, no doubt, but still of strength; while at the same time they are made more compact at their base by weeds and bark of trees adhering, which the silt of the river has carried down. Let so much about Indian ants be said by me now, as it was said by Iobas long ago.
(16) In the country of the Indian Areianoi there is a subterranean chasm down in which there are mysterious vaults, concealed ways, and through passages invisible to men. These are deep withal and stretch to a very great distance. How they came to exist, and how they were excavated, the Indians do not say, nor do I concern myself to inquire. Hither the Indians bring more than thrice ten thousand head' of cattle of different kinds, sheep and goats, and oxen and horses; and every person who has been terrified by an ominous dream, or a warning sound or prophetic voice, or who has seen a bird of evil augury, as a substitute for his life casts into the chasm such a victim as his private means can afford, giving the animal as a ransom to save his soul alive. The victims conducted thither are not led in chains nor otherwise coerced, but they go along this road willingly, as if urged forward by some mysterious spell and as soon as they find themselves on the verge of the chasm they voluntarily leap in, and disappear for ever from human sight so soon as they fall into this mysterious and viewless cavern of the earth. But above there are heard the
