394 pliny's natural histoet. [Book IX. 



many fish are taken in a state of blindness.®^ Hence it is, that 

 during these months they lie concealed in holes, in the same 

 manner as land animals, as we have already ^"^ mentioned; 

 and more especially the hippurus,^' and the coracinus,^® which 



Archestratiis looks upon its head as a delicacy, but thinks so little of the 

 other parts, that they are not, in his opinion, worth carr}ing away. He was, 

 however, well known to he much too refined in his notions of epicurism. 



^5 Hardouin Fays that Aristotle, B. viii. c. 20, from whom tbis account 

 is taken, does not say this of all kinds of fish, but only of those which have 

 large heads. 



^'^ In B. viii. c. 54 and 55, where he is speaking of bears and other 

 animals. 



S' Cuvier states that Pliny takes this name from Aristotle, and that 

 Athenaeus, B. vii., says that it is synonymous with the Greek name, Kopv- 

 (paivij. He also informs us, that modern naturalists have applied these 

 two names to the dorade of navigators, the lampuga of the Spaniards and 

 Sicilians, the Coryphaena hippurus of Linnaeus, but that it is not clear that 

 it has been applied on sufficient grounds : as there is no trace whatever of 

 dther of the two ancient names on the coasts of the Mediterranean, and the 

 ancient writers have given no sufficient characteristics of the coryphaena or 

 hippurus. It was, we learn, of excellent flavour, and in the habit of 

 springing out of the water, from which, Athenaeus says, it received the 

 name of " arneutes," from apvd^, " a lamb." 



8^ Cuvier remarks, that Rondelet and others of the modems have 

 thought that this was sjTionymous with the crow-fish, the corb of the 

 French, the Scisena nigra of Linnaeus, but that his own researches on t)ie 

 subject had led him to a different conclusion. Its name was derived, he 

 says, from the Greek Kopa^, " a crow," on account of the blackness of its 

 colour, as Oppian says, Halieut. B. i. 1. 133 ; but there were white ones as 

 well, which Athenaeus, E. viii., says, were the best eating, though the 

 black ones were the most common. Aristophanes, as quoted by Athenaeus, 

 E. viii., calls it also the fish with black gills, fitXavoTrrspvyov. Ai'is- 

 totle. Hist. Anim. B. v. c. 10, says that it was a small fish, and one of 

 those that increase rapidly in growth. It was little esteemed, and was 

 much used, as we learn from Athenaeus and the Geoponica, for salting, and 

 making garum or fish -sauce. It was also used as a bait for the anthias or 

 flower-fish. Strabo, B. xiii., also speaks of a river-fish of this name, as 

 being found in the Nile ; the flesh of which Athenaeus mentions as being 

 remarkably good eating, and the best among the fishes of the Nile. Mar- 

 tial also, B. xiii. Ep. 85, calls it "princeps Niliaci macelli," the "prince 

 of the produce of the Nile." That fish, however, Pliny says, B. xxxii. c. 

 5, was peculiar to the Nile ; and he states, B. v. c. 9, that in consequence 

 of finding it in a lake of Lower Mauritania, Juba pretended that the Nile 

 took its rise in that lake. Athenaeus says, B. iii., that the dwellers on the 

 Nile called it TreXrjj, " the buckler ;" and in B. vii., that the people of Alex- 

 andria called it wXarn^. from its broad shape. Now, Cuvier remarks, it 

 is well known that the best fish of the Nile at the present day is the bolty, 

 the Labrus Niloticus of Linnaeus, and the Chromis Nilotica of his own sys- 

 tem ; and this he takes to be the Coracinus albus. It is flat and compressed, 



