280 Mr. E. W. Gudger on the 



made heavy enough to do." This, however, seems to be 

 taken from Pliny. 



In the sayings of Pantagruel, Rabelais (1553), in Book IV. 

 Chapter 62, has the following: — "....an Echeneis or 

 Remora, a silly, weakly fish, in spite of all the winds that 

 blow from the thirty-two points of the compass, will in the 

 midst of* a hurricane make you the biggest first-rate remain 

 stock still, as if she were becalmed, or the blustering tribe 

 had blown their last." And again, in Book V. Chapter 26: 

 u . . . . there (in the country of Satin) I saw a Remora, a 

 little fish called by the Greeks Echeneis, near a big ship 

 which was motionless although under full sail, on the high 

 sea." 



We now come to Rondelet (1558), who attempts to show 

 that the retardation of ships might have been effected by the 

 Echeneis of Pliny, the great shell-fish of Mucian, or the eel 

 of Oppian. Indeed, he asseverates (page 313) that he has 

 known a lamprey to thus hold back a boat : "... it [Oppian's 

 eel] stops it and holds it [a boat] back ; a thing which 

 corresponds to our lamprey, and which I have known 

 through experience, for if it puts its mouth against a boat it 

 stops it, and I have seen it thus." Then he adds, " There is 

 no need to marvel that various fishes are called by different 

 authors by the same name, nor that the same fish be called 

 by many and divers names, for that often happeus." For 

 the rest, Rondelet quotes and comments on the accounts of 

 Pliny and others on the true Echeneis (pp. 334-5), but adds 

 nothing of himself. More might be expected of this great 

 ichthyologist ; but it seems that he never saw the fish (he 

 gives no figure of it) and knew nothing of it at first-hand. 



Conrad Gesner was the greatest of the encyclopedic 

 writers of natural history, and his ' Historia Animalium,' 

 Hooks I.-IJ1I., was published Basel, 1551-1558*. In 

 Book I1II. he discourses at considerable length "Con- 

 cerning Echeneis or Remora," but there is nothing in his 

 writings to indicate that he ever saw the fish. He adds no 

 new data ; but this section of his book is of value because 

 in it he quotes a large number of the writers previously 

 cited in this paper. However, even here his value to the 

 student of ichthyological archaeology is crippled by the fact 



* It, will be noted that the works cited of both Gesner and Rondelet 

 are dated 1558, and vet Gesner quotes Rondelet at considerable length. 

 However, the apparent discrepancy disappears "when it is remembered 

 that Rondelet's ' L'ilistoire Entiere des Poissons' is but a translation 

 into bis native French of his original work first published in Latin in 

 1554. 



