12 SYNGNATHID.E. 



in Crete (a village, they say). Tlie bystanders were pitying tliem, and di- 

 recting tliat the dog should be killed, and his liver given to the young men 

 to eat as a cure for the disease ; others were recommending to take them 

 to the temple of the Roccsean Diana so called, and supplicate the goddess for 

 a cure. The old man, however, praising them for their good advice, took 

 no further notice, but proceeded very fearlessly and boldly to cleanse the 

 paunches of the Hippocampuses of their contents ; and then some of these 

 paunches he roasted, and gave them to his sons to take and eat : others he 

 bruised with vinegar and honey, and applying them as a plaster on the 

 wounds caused by the bites, so got the better of the canine madness in the 

 young men, by the longing after water, which you will understand the 

 Hippocampuses excited in them. And in this way he cured the boys, 

 though he was a long time about it." 



^•Elian. de Nat. Anim. lib. xiv. cap. xx. 



The poet Epimenides, as quoted by authority from which lies no ap- 

 peal (Tit. i. 12), has left recorded of his countrymen of Crete no favourable 

 character for credibility : 



KpTJTes ae\ ■^evaTai, KaKa 6r]pia, yacrrepes apyai. 



However, it is but fair to our old fisherman to mention, that his designation 

 as a Cretan rests upon a merely conjectural, though certainly most probable, 

 emendation of the text of ^Elian by Gyllius. 



No person who has once seen a Hippocampus can doubt the derivation 

 of its Greek names iTTTroKOif/j'r}] and i'jr'^OKOi^'Trog from iTTTog, a horse, and 

 fcccf/jTT^, a caterpillar. 



The figures in Tab. II. represent the Hippocampus ramulosus of the 

 size, and in two of the attitudes, of life. 



