Myth of the Ship-holder. 275 



figures of the fishes themselves are presented. PI. XV. 

 of this paper shows Leptecheneis naucrates (fig. 2) and 

 Re mora brachyptera (fig. 3), which are commonly found 

 in our Atlantic waters. The essential external differences 

 between the fishes are readily seen from the figures. Fig. 1 

 shows the sucking-disk of the Remora. Consideration of 

 the structures of these fishes is reserved for a later paper. 



The first definite reference to the ship-retarding power of 

 the Echeneis is in a poem on fishing, " Halieutiea," by the 

 Latin poet, Ovid (43 b.c-17 or 18 a.d.). Verse 99 reads : 

 " Parva Echeneis ad est, mirum, mora puppibus ingens " ; 

 which may be translated, " The small Echeneis is present, 

 wonderful to say, a great hindrance to ships. ,} 



Pliny the Elder (23-79 a.d.) twice refers to the Echeneis. 

 In Book IX. Chapter 41 of his ' History of Animals ' he 

 says : " It is believed that when it (Echeneis) has attached 

 itself to the keel of a ship its progress is impeded, and that 

 it is from this circumstance that it takes its name/' This 

 (together with other data. extraneous to our subject) is taken 

 from Aristotle. Then PJiny quotes one Mucianus (about 

 whom nothing has been obtained) that a murex, a kind of 

 gasteropod mollusk, has a similar ship-retarding power, and 

 gives from this writer an alleged instance of a ship being 

 held by it. Pliny in the same chapter quotes one Trebius 

 Niger that the fish is about one foot in length and that it 

 can retard ships. I have been unable to find out anything 

 about this writer ; this reference, like the one to Mucianus, 

 is entirely obscure*. 



In Book XXXII. Chapter 1, Pliny gives what is the first 

 detailed account of the ship-holding power possessed by the 

 Echeneis, and it seems well to quote him in extenso as given 

 in Bostock and Riley's translation (1857). 



" And yet all these forces [winds, tides, &c] a 



single fish, and that of a very diminutive size .... the fish 

 known as the ' Echeneis ' . . . . possesses the power of 

 counteracting A fish bridles the impetuous violence 



* Pliny also gives two other uses of the Echeneis, which though 

 outside the scope of this paper, are of enough interest to appear in a 

 footnote. The first (which he seems to have had from the Greeks) is 

 its use in love philters, and for the purpose of delaying judgments and 

 legal proceedings ; all of which he justly says are evil properties, compen- 

 sated for, however, by its use to stay the flow of blood in pregnancy and 

 for the preservation of the foetus in utero. The second use, quoted from 

 Trebius Niger, is that when preserved in salt it is able to draw up gold 

 from the bottom of the deepest well. These fictions are gravely 

 repeated by many writers down to the middle of the seventeenth 

 century .... at least as bite as the time of Rabelais (1553). 



21* 



