6 ANIMAL PARASITES AND MESSMATES. 



the stomacli of some of them, and found there, not the 

 animals taken by the holothurise, but the remains of 

 its respiratory processess which they were in the act of 

 digesting. Is it then merely a messmate ? We must 

 have more information on this point ; and if it were not 

 accidentally that the fierasfer swallowed the walls of the 

 compartment in which he was lodged, he ought rather 

 to take his place among parasites. Though it lodges in 

 the respiratory processes, as the learned professor at 

 Wurtzburg asserts, the fierasfer may also be a mess- 

 mate after the fashion of so many others which inhabit 

 the neighbourhood of the rectum, in order the more con- 

 veniently to snap up those animals which are attracted 

 by the odour. 



The fierasfers are not the only fishes which seek 

 assistance from the holothuriae; a species lives at 

 Zamboanga, to which the specific name of Scabra has 

 been given, and in the stomach of which, says Mons. 

 Johannes Miiller, usually lives a myxinoid fish, called 

 Enclielyopliis vermicularis. Unfortunately, we are not 

 told in what part of the stomach it resides ; for all is 

 stomach in these animals. 



It is less degrading for a fish to ask assistance from 

 one in his own rank. The Mediterranean offers a curious 

 instance of this. Eisso saw at Nice, at the commence- 

 ment of this century, the monstrous fish known under the 

 name of Beaudroie (the angler, or fishing-frog) lodging 

 in its enormous branchial sac a fish of the family of the 

 Murenidse, the Apterychtus ocellatus. He is found there 

 evidently under the condition of a messmate. Although 

 the eels generally get their living easily, the Angler pos- 

 sesses fishing implements which are wanting in them, and 



