PAEENTAL CAKE AMONG FEESH-WATER FISHES. 



•139 



they thought, by the fact that the Siiiirus is called at the present da}' 

 Glanos or Glano in Turkey. Fifty-six years later (1895) another 

 eminent European ichthyologist (Prof. F. A. Smitt) declared that 

 " the ancient account of Aristotle, that the male hatches the roe, is now 

 regarded as dubious." 



It may be here recalled that the Silurus- glanis does not care for its 

 eggs, but after dejpositing and fecundating them, the parents leave 

 them to Dame Nature. The skepticism of naturalists respecting the 

 statements of Aristotle was then quite natural as long as there was 

 supposed to be no structural difference between the common silurus 

 and the glanis of the Achelous. 



From the fourth century before the Christian era a leap may be 

 made to the latter half of the nineteenth and into a new world. 



America is not inhabited by any species of the same group or even 

 subfamily as the Glanis, but has numerous representatives of the same 

 family and of a subfam- 

 ily quite closely related 

 to the Silurines. Species 

 are found almost every- 

 where in the streams and 

 lakes of eastern America 

 and the valley of the 

 Mississippi, and are gen- 

 erally known as catfishes. 

 It was also long known 

 that some at least exer- 

 cised care of their eggs 

 and young. It was there- 

 fore quite natural that 

 Prof. Louis A g a s s i z 

 should accept with implicit faith the account of the ancient natu- 

 ralist and at the same time be skeptical as to the correctness of 

 the identification of the Grecian fish with that which he had well 

 known in central Europe. In 1856 he received specimens of a Silnrid 

 from the same river (Achelous) in Acarnania from which Aristotle 

 had secured his Glanis, and these were evidently of the same kind 

 as that described by the old naturalist; according to C Felton, 

 they even still bear a name, •" Glanidi, formed, according to numerous 

 analogies, from the genitive (Glanidos) " of glanis. The specimens, 

 on comparison with some of the wels, were found to be quite different, 

 the species was named Glanis Aristotelis, and an interesting account 

 of them, in the form of translations from Aristotle, was presented to 

 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and published in their 

 " Proceedings " (HI, pp. 325-334). 



Fig 27 



Head from above of Aristotle's catfish {I'arasilurus 

 aristotelis). After Nature. 



