354 ANNUAL KEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



pear in handbooks of medicine and herbals like the " Hortus Sani- 

 tatis" or " Margarita Philosophica " consist chiefly of oft- repeated 

 excerpts from ancient writers on natural histor3\ To the same class 

 of popular handbooks belongs the so-called " Krauterbuch " of 

 Adam Lonicer, a work which was frequently reedited and trans- 

 lated, and which . contains a rough sketch of Hippocampus. The 

 illustrations shown in plate 3, figures 1 and 2, are reproduced from 

 woodcuts in the 1536 edition of the Frankfort physician's " Hortus 

 Sanitatis," intended to illustrate the sea horse and Remora {Echeneis 

 naucrates) . 



New interest in the plants and animals of distant lands was 

 awakened by the voyages of discovery that were made toward the 

 close of the fifteenth century and in the early decades of the six- 

 teenth century, and consequently a new era in natural science may 

 be said to begin at about the year 1500. Columbus brought back 

 with him from the New World in 1493 not only six Indians, but live 

 parrots, many plants, and a few stuffed animals, among which latter 

 was a fish from Hispaniola, the peculiar characters of which are 

 recorded in his Journal (entry for Nov. 16, 1492). In all probability 

 this was either the trunkfish or a specimen of Diodon hisfrix, a species 

 which figures prominently in sixteenth and seventeenth century 

 ichthyological writings under the name of '■'' Revers'm, var. squam- 

 raosus.'''' The other variety, called the '"'• Reversus Ivdicus anguilli- 

 formis^'' is clearly the Remora ; and both forms are associated with 

 the original eye-witness account given by Columbus of having been 

 employed by native West Indians for the capture of other fish. Like 

 other fish stories, the tale lost nothing in repeating. Oviedo (1535) 

 " lifted " his account from the writings of Peter Martyr (Libretto of 

 1504 and De Rebus Oceanis, 1511), and added considerable em- 

 broidery of his own. Rondelet passed the story along to Gesner, 

 Aldrovandi, and John Jonston, all of whom give illustrations of the 

 two "species" of Reversus, and the first-named even portrays a 

 fishing scene in which the anguilliform variety is seen in the act of 

 capturing its prey (pL 3, fig. 3). Nieremberg (1635) also gives a 

 similar figure. 



The attentive reader will not fail to note in these various accounts 

 of the " Reversus," or, more properly speaking, the Remora, that a 

 peculiar property is still ascribed to it which in medieval times was 

 transferred to this genus from the Hippocampus; that is, its extraor- 

 dinary aversion to the air. All of the authors just named mention 

 this characteristic. Thus, Jonston, in his " Natural Wonders," speaks 

 in following manner: 



The Indian Reversus like an Eel, is a Fish of an unusual figure, like to a 

 great Eel in body, and it hath on the hinder part of the head a capacious skin, 

 like to a great purse. The inhabitants hold this fish bound at the side of the 



