392 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTOEY. Book IX. 



be full of eggs. Nearly all kinds of fish that are covered with 

 scales are gregarious. They are most easily taken before sun- 

 rise ; 77 for then more particularly their powers of seeing are 

 defective. They sleep during the night ; and when the weather 

 is clear, are able to see just as well then as during the 

 day. It is said, also, that it greatly tends to promote their 

 capture to drag the bottom of the water, and that by so doing 

 more are taken at the second haul 78 than at the first. They 

 are especially fond of the taste of oil, and find nutriment in 

 gentle showers of rain. Indeed, the very reeds, 79 even, although 

 they are produced in swamps, will not grow to maturity with- 

 out the aid of rain : in addition to this, we find that wherever 

 fishes remain constantly in the same water, if it is not renewed 

 they will die. 



CHAP. 24. FISHES WHICH HAVE A STONE IN THE HEAT) ; THOSE 



WHICH KEEP THEMSELVES CONCEALED DUEING WINTER; AND 

 THOSE WHICH AEE NOT TAKEN IN WINTEE, EXCEPT UPON STATED 

 DAYS. 



All fish have a presentiment of a rigorous winter, but more 

 especially those which are supposed to have a stone 80 in the 

 head, the lupus, 81 for instance, the chromis, 82 the scise- 



colour, variegated with black rays, which answers very well to the Perca 

 scriba of Linnaeus, approaching most nearly to the Perca cabrilla. 



77 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 75. 



78 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 7. 



79 Aristotle makes the same remark, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 25. 



80 Cuvier observes, that all fishes are found to have in the membranous 

 labyrinth of the ear, bodies like stone, enclosed in a certain kind of gela- 

 tinous liquor. These bodies, however, he says, are not equally large in 

 all kinds of fish. He says that it is found largest in the scisena. 



81 The Perca labrax of Linnaeus. Called "loup," or "wolf," on 

 the Mediterranean coasts of France, and " bar " on the shores of the 

 ocean. 



82 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 19, attributes to the chromis, Cu- 

 vier says, stones in the head, B. iv. c. 8, an acute hearing, B. iv. c. 9, the 

 power of making a sort of grunting noise, and the habit of living gregari- 

 ously, and depositing the eggs once a year, B. iv. c. 9 ; all which character- 

 istics, he says, are found in the Scisena umbra of the naturalists, the maigre 

 of the French. In addition to this, Epicharmus, as quoted by Athenseus, 

 B. vii.. says that the chromis and the xiphias are, at the beginning of 

 spring, the very best of fish ; a quality which must be admitted to belong 

 to the maigre, for its size and its excellent flavour. However, he says, 

 seeing that the glaucus, which Aristotle has distinguished from the 



