HIPPOLITO SALVIANI. 37 



teryyian or cartilaginous ones, tlie other great, 

 though less numerous series ; arid by the simplest 

 and most natural suggestion, this name, which cha- 

 racterizes the largest number of osseous fishes, is 

 applied by our author, as by the ancients, to a fish 

 not of the osseous but cartilaginous series, to a 

 Squalus of Linnseus, the Splnax acantliias of Cuvier, 

 the picked dog-fish. We are informed that the 

 acanthias is so denominated from its osseous spine ; 

 that it is of the family of sharks ; that its heart is 

 five-cornered ; that it has the ova near the pr^ecordia, 

 over the mammae ; that it is not produced in the 

 channel of Negropont, between Boeotia and Eubia." 

 The account here supplied of one of the sturgeons, 

 the accipensor, is very much of the same character. 

 " Its name is adopted by the Romans from the 

 Greeks ; it is a small fish, with a great gape, of a 

 triangular figure. This fish is the only one whi'ch 

 has the scales turned towards the mouth. The 

 branchife are four in number and simple. The gall 

 flows into the intestines. It swims in a course op- 

 posite to the current of water ; it is not often met 

 with. It feeds in the depths of the Pamphylian 

 Sea and in no other place. It has often been re- 

 garded the noblest of fishes, and is brought into 

 feasts by persons crowned M'ith garlands, and ac- 

 companied with music." Lastly, of these true fish 

 we shall give the somewhat more extended account 

 of the common eel, angidlla. " It is long and slip- 

 pery ; its branchiae are four in number, simple 

 and small. It has only two fins ; its skin is very 



