438 



PARENTAL CAEE AMONG FRESH-WATER FISHES, 



them up to the shallowest place they can ; but he does not even then leave his 

 offspring; but if he chance to be a young flsh he is easily taken by the hook, 

 because he snaps at all the fishes that approach him ; but if he is already 

 accustomed to this, and has swallowed hooks before, he does not even then 

 desert his young, but breaks the hook by a very strong bite. 



In 1839 two of the greatest ichthyologists of the last century, 

 Ciivier and Valenciennes,^ regarded this account with great skep- 

 ticism and recapitulate it, concluding with this opinion : 



What Aristotle relates in detail, and in two passages, of the care which the 

 male silurus takes of the eggs of his female, borders a little on the marvelous. 



Fig. 26. — Aristotle's catflsli ( Pa ru silurus aristotclis) on nest. (Idea. 



According to him. the large siluri deposit them in deep waters ; the smaller 

 among the roots of willows and other trees, among the reeds or even the mosses. 

 The female, having laid them, leaves them, but the male guards and defends 

 them ; and, as these eggs are long in hatching, he continues this care forty or 

 fifty days. 



Skepticism was not at all unnatural in view of the fact that the 

 French naturalists thought there was no doubt that the Aristotelian 

 fish was specifically identical with the /Silurus glanis of central 

 Europe; "On ne pent douter que notre silure ne soit le FXavig 

 d'Aristote," they exclaimed (p. 344). This opinion was confirmed, 



aHistoire Naturelle des Poissons, t. 14, pp. 350, 351. 



