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Otago Daily Times, Issue 18324, 15 August 1921, Page 6

Recently much has been made by American papers of the phenomenon of the Manatee River in Florida and its strange music. People often go out in boats to listen to the free orchestra that sounds much like a cornet-band playing miles away, then changing into the notes of a piano at hand. For a week or two the water ia silent. Then suddenly breaks out the music, which is no new thing, but is mentioned in traditionary tales of the native Indians of that locality. So far it haa baffled the scientists. At present it is attributed to musical fish. “Musical” fish, however, are not confined to this Floridan river. They abound off the coast of Ceylon, and have been heard as far at sea as' 100 miles south-west of Colombo. In northern Ceylon, near Batticoloa, lies a “singing lake,” from which come sounds sometimes like an -Bohan harp, sometimes a multitude of the gentlest notes. The Cingalese declare that these sounds are produced by shell-fish. Be this as it may, the same phenomenon is met with in the muddy creeks near Bombay, and Visagapatam, and along the Coromandel shore. But. in Indian waters the notes are different —all of one pitch, slow and drowsy in tone. Across the Bay of Bengal, however, off the coast of Burma, and also in the East Indies, and in the fresh water of the Sarumoth River, Borneo, the notes become distinctly musical again; they have been compared to those of a string orchestra, borne on the wind from a distant shore. In the West Indies, and along the southern coast of the United States, is a fish, the “Drummer,” or “Grant,” that gives out a sound resembling a simple drumming, or, as often as not, the noise of a steamer letting off steam. Yet off the shore of Ecuador the notes of the same fish change again into so melodious a strain that the folk call the fish the “Siren” or “Musico.” There the musical fish ia usually heard about sunset and throughout the night; times corresponding to those when the Ceylon phenomenon is audible. In each case the sounds ore not several sustained notes, but innumerable tiny onea, each clear and distinct, in itself. _Bv ly. ing down, oar against the gunwale of a boat, it is possible for one to pick out the sweet trebles mingling with the deepest bass. The “Drummer,’’ or Phogoniaa ehromis, produces its sounds monotonously, possiblv through the action of three movable Plates, serrated with large teeth in its-gullet. The probability is that there is at least another species—a species not yet fixed—existing in the Indian and Pacific waters, which is the producer of the mysterious music arising from the sea.—N. Tourneur in Everyday Science. Fire and quicklime are bring used in an effort to rid Freshwater, Isle of Wight, ol tile plague of mosquitoes, which last year proved such a nuisance to visitors. Experiments are being made on the marshy land m the neighbourhood, which is considered to be the breeding place of these pests. The rushes and grass are being burnt off, and ti > ground and streams liberally treated with