OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



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from the egg is very slow, wherefore the male keeps watch forty 

 or fifty days, that the young may not he devoured by the fishes that 

 happen to be in their neighborhood.' * 



" ' Of the river fishes, the male Glanis takes great care of its 

 young. For the female, having brought forth, departs ; but the male, 

 where the greatest deposit of eggs has been formed, remains by them 

 watching, rendering no other service except keeping off other fishes 

 from destroying the young. He does this for forty or fifty days, 

 until the young are sufficiently grown to escape from the other fishes. 

 And he is known to the fishermen wherever he may chance to be 

 watching his eggs ; for he keeps off the fishes by rushing movements, 

 and by making a noise and moaning. And he remains by the eggs 

 with so much of natural affection, that the fishermen, when the eggs 

 adhere to deep roots, bring them up to the shallowest place they can ; 

 but he does not even then leave his offspring, but if he chance to be 

 a young fish, he is easily taken by the hook, because he snaps at all 

 the fishes that approach him ; but if he is already accustomed to this, 

 and has swallowed hooks before, he does not even then desert his 

 young, but breaks the hook by a very strong bite.' t 



" Cuvier, alluding to these passages in the great Histoire Naturelle 

 des Poissons, which he published in connection with Valenciennes, 

 makes the following remarks respecting the fish called Glanis by Aris- 

 totle, and its habits : — 



" ' It cannot be doubted that our Silouros is the TXduis of Aristotle. 

 Besides that it is common in Macedonia, and still bears in Turkey 

 the name of Glanos or Glano^ what the philosopher states concern- 

 ing his Glanis agrees well enough with our Silouros, so far as we 

 know its history ; the disturbance that stormy weather causes him, 

 the slow development of the eggs, their size, the care he takes of 

 them, the noise he makes, &c. 



" ' It is possible that at a certain period the name Silouros, which 

 Aristotle does not employ, may not have been the synonyme of 

 Glanis. For in a passage of iElian, where the Glanis of the Strymon 

 [misprinted in Cuvier's work Shymon] is mentioned, the Glanis of 

 Aristotle is compared with the Silouros. Perhaps this name be- 

 longed originally to some of the species of Egypt or Syria ; but 



* Aristotle, Hist. An., Lib. VI. c. xiii. '^§2-6. 

 t Lib. IX. c. XXV. § 6. 



