254 MALACOP. SUB-BRACH. REMORA SUCKERS. 



rather than from it voluntarily extending its range 

 in this direction. We believe that the sole instance 

 of its occurring here is that mentioned by Dr. Tur- 

 ton, who states that, in the summer of 1806, one 

 was taken by him at Swansea from the back of a 

 cod-fish. It is a well known fish in the Mediter- 

 ranean, and was familiar to the Greeks and Romans, 

 from whom we have received many fabulous ac- 

 counts of its extraordinary powers in attaching itself 

 to the sides of ships and instantly arresting their 

 course. Those who take pleasure in such narrations 

 will find ample details in Pliny's Nat. Hist, and in 

 the voluminous collections of Gesner, Johnson, Ron- 

 delet,,&c. Feeding principally on the small animals 

 diffused throughout the waters of the ocean, it pro- 

 bably receives a sufficiency of food even when at- 

 tached to a moving object, such as a ship or large 

 fish, merely by opening its mouth, which has a very 

 wide gape. But it must be admitted that we know 

 nothing peculiar in its economy to enable us to 

 explain why it is supplied with an apparatus ap- 

 parently intended to meet some peculiar want. 

 Whether it attaches itself to other objects, as Mr. 

 Yarrell remarks, for protection or conveyance, or 

 both, is a question which has not been satisfactorily 

 ascertained. 



The length of the Mediterranean Remora is about 

 eighteen inches, and the length of the head nearly 

 one-fifth of the proportion of the whole fish. The 

 adhesive shield contains seventeen or eighteen trans- 

 verse laminae, and it commences just behind and 



