STONE BASS. 201 



sought shelter among the suspended bcrnacles or weeds, which 

 float in masses in connection with the wood. That they do 

 not themselves feed on the bernacles is plain, for I have never 

 found them in the stomach; but what cause should lead them 

 to come to us under such circumstances, or as is reported to 

 have happened in some rare instances, where the bottom of a 

 ship has been foul from the same cause, appears difficult to 

 be explained; as is also the fact that so large a number 

 should be thus attracted, when they are reported in the 

 Mediterranean to be of solitary habits. 



So familiar is the opinion that such a mass of floating wreck 

 in the northern portion of the Atlantic is usually accompanied 

 with a multitude of these fishes, that I am informed, when 

 it floats within sight of a ship and the weather is favourable, 

 a boat is often sent with the expectation to obtain some of 

 them, which is done by piercing them with a spear usually 

 • employed by sailors for such an object, under the name of 

 grayns. So many as thirty-five have been secured at one 

 time by a single boat on our own coast. It is agreed on all 

 hands that they form an excellent dish at table. 



Of a considerable number of these fishes which have come 

 under my observation I have never met with more than one 

 example that has exceeded, or even reached the weight of twenty 

 pounds. But on the evidence of Cuvier we gather that in 

 the Mediterranean they sometimes so vastly exceed this, as to 

 be met with of a hundredweight; and it is from this circum- 

 stance chiefly that I am led to believe it likely to be a fish 

 long lost to science, but known to the ancients, and men- 

 tioned by Oppian under the name of Etnaian caiitharus, 

 an epithet which Scaliger pronounces to have been applied to 

 the fish on account of its great size. The particulars leading 

 to this supposition are but few, and perhaps obscure, but they 

 agree with the characters of the fish as known in its native 

 haunts; and although Ovid designates it as 



"Cantharus ingratus succo," 

 "The Cantharus of unpleasant flavour," 



this may have depended on the mode of cookery, or the 

 taste of the eater; and that it was fished for as a valuable 

 VOL. I. 2 G 



