50 RATXBOW WRASS. 



experience severe pains in the bo\yels. Swimmers and divers 

 are much molested by this fish, in the same manner as flesh- 

 flies assail and bite them; and Oppian compares the effect to 

 the sting of a nettle. These divers are compelled to drive 

 the fishes away, to avoid being tormented with their bite; and 

 so persevering is the annoyance, that the men are obliged for 

 the time to give up following their occupations. 



However foreign to truth this account, and especially the 

 first portion of it, may appear to us, we should call to mind, 

 in vindication of the writer, that he reports no more than the 

 current opinion of his day, and that the particulars themselves 

 were in close connection with the theories then predominant. 

 It was long held as a principle in natural philosophy, that the 

 sea contained something in every instance that bore an analogy 

 to what Avas in the sky above, or on the land; and the 

 attention of the philosopher was directed to the discovery of 

 such objects as were thus believed to carry out these corres- 

 pondences of nature. Many figures, with a little violence done 

 to the likeness, are in this light handed down to us by writers 

 of the middle ages, who had not yet escaped from the trammels 

 thrown around them by the ancients ; and it was w^ith these 

 impressions that they imposed a name upon a fish because 

 they supposed it to be endued with some of the ill qualities 

 which belonged to an insect with which they were acquainted. 

 The Creeping Julus was said to convey a poisonous bite; and 

 that the fish Jul is will annoy and bite we have the authority 

 of no less an observer than E,ondeletius, who describes Avhat 

 happened to himself, as well as on another occasion to a friend. 

 When on one occasion he went to bathe near Antipolis, he 

 saw several of these small fishes hasting towards him, and they 

 attacked with their bites not only his legs, but the hard 

 portions of his heels; and a similar circumstance was related 

 to him by some gentlemen, as happening to them near Nice. 

 No injurious effect followed to this eminent naturalist; but it 

 is highly probable that the terror which would arise to an 

 ordinary person from the prospect of danger, would confirm the 

 impression that the danger itself was not wholly imaginary. 

 There is reason to believe that these fish are usually in com- 

 panies. Their food and season of spawning are for the most 

 part the same as in other kinds of AVrasses; but they are little 



