294 SUPPLEMENT ON 



vocal. After having described the corvina (scicena nigra, Bl.) 

 under the name of coracin, corb, or corbeau ; the umbrina 

 under that of umbra, or doe, and having even given it the 

 name of maigre, he passes to another species named, he says, 

 peis-rei (royal fish) in Langnedoc, and which he considers as 

 the lotus of the ancients. " It is more white," he adds, " than 

 the preceding two, either from its scales, or from its flesh. It 

 wants the tubercle of the chin, which characterizes the doe 

 (sciarna cirrhosa); it is less broad than the corb (sciena nigra, 

 Bl.) Its scales are silvery and oblique. Its teeth are marked, 

 and it has stones in the head." And as Rondelet applies to 

 it afterwards what the ancients have said respecting the size 

 of the latus, he thus tacitly attributes to it the same size. 



We must remember here that the latus of the Nile is the 

 variole (perca niloiica) , but the latus of the Mediterranean 

 of which these same authors speak, may very well be the 

 maigre, which sufficiently resembles the perca nilotica, to 

 cause the ancients to consider it as of the same genus. 



Belon is neither less precise nor less exact. As well as 

 Salvianus, he considers this fish of which we treat at present, 

 as the umbra of the ancients. It usually weighs, he says, 

 sixty pounds, and is sometimes four cubits in length. Its 

 teeth are a little crowded, firm, sharp, in which it differs from 

 the glaucus, which merely has asperities to the jaws. The 

 maigre has no sting to the anal fin (this character is only true 

 comparatively, the sting of this species being in fact single and 

 very small) ; its caudal is neither forked nor round, but as it 

 were angular; its scales appear oblique. In the ocean it has 

 these scales most obscure ; in the Mediterranean they pre- 

 sent the brilliancy of gold and silver, and, when the fish 

 moves, shine with all the colours of the rainbow. But at 

 the same time that Belon so well describes the maigre, under 

 its Lauguedoc name of peis-rei, he applies the Genoese name 

 of fegaro to his glaucus, which, according to his description, 



