THRASHER. 39 



coasts of Britain in the summer, and is sometimes caught en- 

 tangled in drift nets. I have been informed of two of them 

 taken in this manner at one time, and from the circumstances 

 attending the capture of these and others, we may conclude 

 that the force they exert in the water is very great; as indeed 

 we might also conclude from the length and flexibility of their 

 tail. They had carried the whole body of the net before them, 

 until it had been thrown back over the head ropes; by which 

 means they had fallen into a bag, from which they had not 

 been able to extricate themselves. 



It is one of the fishes that has been reported to receive its 

 young ones into its stomach as a place of shelter; and Ron- 

 deletius informs us that he saw them cut out from a Thrasher 

 that had been taken. The fishermen supposed that they had 

 been swallowed through hunger ; but from their being alive and 

 uninjured, he felt no doubt that his own conclusion was the 

 true one. 



I found young herrings in the stomach of one I examined. 



From an intimation of ./Elian, it appears probable that the 

 Greek fishermen were in the habit of seeking after it for food, 

 (Var. Hist., B. 1,) and for this purpose Risso pronounces it 

 very good. 



It is worthy of notice in this place that the author who first 

 described this fish, was the well-known Dr. Joannes Caius, 

 (John Keys,) who wrote a work, "De Canibus Britannicis," at 

 the end of which, 'de rariorum animalium historia,' he gives 

 an account of an example that had been taken in a net in the 

 year 1569. Its length from the snout to the tail was seven 

 (Roman) feet, and of the tail seven feet and a half. He calls it 

 Cercus, and derives the name from the Greek Karcos, because 

 of its tail: a curious etymology for an English word. The 

 flesh he compares to that of a Salmon, but confesses that it 

 was not quite as agreeable to the palate as the flesh of that fish. 



The extreme length of an example was in a straight line 

 ten feet ten inches and a half, and along the curve eleven 

 feet eight inches; three feet four inches and a half round where 

 thickest; conical from the snout to the pectoral fins, and thick 

 even to the tail, which from the root is five feet and a half 

 long, and consequently more than half the length of the body. 

 Eye prominent, round, hard, and four inches from the snout; 



