181 



SUCKING FISHES. 



{Discohuli of Gouan.) 



This small family of fishes is distinguished by the remarkable 

 character of possessing an organized disk below the throat, 

 where it is encircled with a narrow border of fin, which forms 

 an union also with the ]3ectoral fins. The office of this disk 

 is to enable the fish to fasten itself to any fixed object, in a 

 manner which bears some degree of likeness to that by which 

 the Remora attaches itself to the body of some larger species; 

 and the difference in this respect in the last-named family 

 chiefly lies in the position of the organ, which, as we have 

 seen, is on the top of the head. 



This family of sucking fishes does not appear to have been 

 known to the ancients, but we learn from Griffith's translation 

 of Cuvier's "Animal Kingdom," that a Greek writer of the 

 seventh century, A.D., has mentioned them, although, judging 

 by their habit of adhering to other substances, he regarded 

 them as belonging to the same class as the Remora. He terms 

 the fish mentioned by him Naucrates, which is the name applied 

 by others to the true Remora; but he says the organ was on 

 the middle of the breast, and that it resembled the musical 

 instrument, a cymbal. These fishes were little known also to 

 naturalists of the middle ages, whose notice of the larger 

 species, our Common Lumpfish, appears to have been limited 

 to the circumstances of its curious shape being turned into 

 distortion, for the purpose of its being displayed to the 

 wondering crowd, among a variety of other ''ill-shaped fishes." 



Jonston gives us a figure of this species of the natural 

 form, as well as of that which had been thus distorted; but 

 our earliest knowledge of the peculiarity of this best known 

 of the class is owing to Willughby, who has engraved a 

 competent likeness of the Large Lumpfish, and who also men- 



