78 ECHENEID^. 



have been some sort of Goby or Blenny.* Of its adhering or retarding 

 powers he says nothing farther than may be supposed to be conveyed 

 by the name itself. Oppian's 'E^gi-^jiV ( 'AX. A. 212 — 243), as Rondelet 

 has long ago observed, is evidently the common Lamprey {Pelromyzon 

 marinusy L.) ; and this remark of course applies to the 'E)^gv;;/V of Oppian's 

 copyist ^lian (Hist. i. 36, and ii. 17). Pliny's Remora, " like a great 

 slug" (limax), which stopped the ship of Caius Csesar (Caligula), or that 

 which he mentions, after Trebius Niger, of a foot and a half long and five 

 fingers thick, might well be the same ; but in another place (lib. ix. cap. 

 25), his account of it is a transcript of Aristotle's above cited, with his own 

 additions of its powers ; and this last remark again applies to Ovid's : 



" Parva Echenei's . . . mora puppibus ingens." 



Halieut. 99. 



The account of the 'Y^x^i/riig, also given by Suidas the Greek lexicogra- 

 pher, that it is a little fish, not used for food, the size of a Goby, with 

 four fins, agrees with Aristotle's fish. Another very different sort of Re- 

 mora is that which Pliny speaks of, after Mutian, as illustrious, and conse- 

 crated to the Gnidian Venus, for stopping the messengers despatched by Pe- 

 riander, the Corinthian tyrant, on a barbarous embassy. This was by Mu- 

 tian's description a shell, belonging, probably, to the modern genus Cypreea. 



Failing, however, to discover any traits of the modern Echenei's or Re- 

 mora of ichthyologists in the fishes so called by the ancient Greek and 

 Latin writers, a more probable identity may be suggested between some 

 species of the genus, and the fish by Aristotle, and his copyist ^lian, call- 

 ed (p&ii^Ut the Louse. After speaking of the true crustaceous parasitic ani- 

 mals infesting fishes, he proceeds, " and in the sea between Cyrene and 

 Egypt, there is a fish (lyjvg) about the Dolphin {Delphinus delphis, L.) 

 which they call the Louse ; this becomes the fattest of all fishes, because it 

 partakes of the plentiful supply of food captured by the Dolphin." (Aris- 

 totle's Hist. E. KS. 3. See also iElian, ix. 7.) The different species of 

 the modern genus Echeneis are occasionally called by the Portuguese 

 Piolho, or Peixe piolho ; meaning the same thing. And Schneider, whose 

 opinion upon this subject I find, on turning to the passage in -^lian, 

 agreeing with my own, relates, after Forskal, that in Arabic the Echeneis 

 naucrates, L. is called the Shark's Louse.-|- 



In the stories which some of these writers have related of the powers of 

 the ancient Remora in stopping vessels under the impulse of full sails 

 or oars, there is much doubtless of mere fiction or exaggerated fancy ; 



* I should have said of Cficirotwctcs, Cuv. ; but, hitlierto, inodoni naturalists have discovered no 

 species of this genus in the Mediterranean. 



+ " Keid or laml d kvruli, Ariib It is mentioned by Forskal as seen at Gidda, and by Has- 



selquist at Alexandria." — Harris, Diet. Nat. Hist. Bibl. voce Fish. 



