390 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTOET. Book IX. 



the reason why they are to be seen descending into the Euxine 

 Sea, but never in the act of returning from it. The time for 

 taking tunnies is, from the rising of the Vergilise 64 to the setting 

 of Arcturus : 65 throughout the rest of the winter season, they 

 lie concealed at the bottom of deep creeks, unless they are in- 

 duced to come out by the warmth of the weather or the full 

 moon. These fish fatten 66 to suc'h an extraordinary degree as 

 to burst. The longest period of their life 67 is two years. 



CHAP. 21. WHY FISHES LEAP ABOVE THE SUEFACE OF THE WATER. 



There is a little animal, 68 in appearance like a scorpion, and 

 of the size of a spider. 69 This creature, by means of its sting, 

 attaches itself below the fin to the tunny and the fish known 

 as the sword-fish 70 and which often exceeds the dolphin in 

 magnitude, and causes it such excruciating pain, that it will 

 often leap on board of a ship even. Pish will also do the same 

 at other times, when in dread of the violence of other fish, and 

 mullets more especially, which are of such extraordinary swift- 

 ness, that they will sometimes leap over a ship, if lying cross- 

 wise. 



descent of the Argonauts from the Ister into the Adriatic, that such a 

 passage by water was totally impossible ; hence, as Hardouin says, he is 

 obliged here to have recourse to subterraneous passages. 



64 The Pleiades. See B. ii. c. 47. The rising of the Pleiades was con- 

 sidered the beginning of summer, being the forty-eighth day after the 

 vernal equinox. See also B. xviii. c. 59. 



65 The evening setting, namely. This took place on the fourth day before 

 the nones of November. See B. xyiii. c. 74. 



66 Aristotle, Hist. Anim, B. vi. c. 16. 



67 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 16. Hardouin remarks, that the 

 tunny which Pliny mentions in c. 17, as weighing so many hundreds of 

 pounds, must certainly have been older than this. 



6b This is, as Cuvier has remarked, a crustaceous insect of the parasitical 

 class Lerna3a, which are monoculous [and form the modern class of the 

 Epizoa]. Gmelin, he says, has called it " Pennatula filosa," though, in fact, 

 it is not a pennatula [or polyp] at all. As Dalechamps observes, its ap- 

 pearance is very different from that of a scorpion. Penetrating the flesh 

 of the tunny or sword-fish, it almost drives the creature to a state of 

 madness. 



69 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 19. Appian also, in his Halieutics, B. ii., 

 makes mention of this animal. Pintianus remarks, that Athenaeus, on read- 

 ing this passage of Aristotle, read it not as " arachnes," but " drachmas ;" 

 not the size of a spider, but the weight of a " drachma," or Roman denarius. 



70 Or the emperor fish, Cuvier says, the Xiphias gladius of Linnaeus. 



