so plint's natural HISTOEY. [Book XXXII. 



fish, melted in the sun and incorporated with honey, is an 

 excellent improver of the eye-sight ;^^ the same, too, with 

 castoreum,®* in combination with honey. The gall of the 

 callionymus®^ heals marks upon the eyes and cauterizes fleshy 

 excrescences about those organs : indeed, there is no fish with 

 a larger quantity of gall than this, an opinion expressed too 

 by Menander in his Comedies.^* This fish is known also as 

 the '* uranoscopos,"®^ from the eyes being situate in the upper 

 part of the head.^^ The gall, too, of the coracinus" has the 

 efi'ect of sharpening the eyesight. 



The gall of the red sea-scorpion,^ used with stale oil or Attic 

 honey, disperses incipient cataract; for which purpose, the 

 application should be made three times, on alternate days. A 

 similar method is also employed for removing indurations^ of 

 the membrane of the eyes. The surmullet, used as a diet, 

 weakens the eyesight, it is said. The sea-hare is poisonous 

 itself, but the ashes of it are useful as an application for pre- 

 venting superfluous hairs on the eyelids from growing again, 

 when they have been once pulled out by the roots. For this 

 purpose, however, the smaller the fish is, the better. Small 

 scallops, too, are salted and beaten up with cedar resin for a 

 similar purpose, or else the frogs known as " diopetes "^ and 



9^ This assertion reminds us of the healing effects of the fish with 

 which Tobit cured his father's bhndness. See Tobit, c. xi. v. 13. 



92 See c. 13 of this Book. 



83 Identified by Ajasson with the white Rascasse of the Mediterranean. 

 Hardouin combats the notion that this was the fish, the gall of which was 

 employed by Tobit for the cure of his father, and is inclined to think that 

 the Silurus was in reality the fiish ; a notion no better founded than the 

 other, Ajasson thinks. 



9^ In his " Messenia," for instance. The fragment has been preserved 

 by ^lian, Hist. Anim. B. xiii. c. 4. Ajasson remarks that the ^icients 

 clearly mistook the swimming bladder of the fish for the gall. 



95 Or "heaven-gazer." 



96 The original has " ab oculo quern," — but we have adopted the 

 reading suggested by Dalechamps, " Ab oculis quos in superiore capite." 

 Ajasson says that the white rascasse has the eyes so disposed on the upper 

 part of the head as to have the appearance of gazing upwards at the 

 heavens. Hence it is that at Genoa, the fish is commonly known as the 

 prete or " priest." 



97 See B. ix. c. 32. 



98 See Chapter 17 of the present Book. ^^ •' Albugines." 



^ Meaning/literally, " Fallen from Jupiter,'' in reference to their sup- 

 poaed descent from heaven in showers of rain. 



