Chap. 4.] MARVELS OF THE KED SEA. 5 



state of pregnancy so much as looks upon one of these fishes, 

 hhe is immediately seized with nausea and vomiting a proof 

 that the injury has reached the stomach and abortion is the 

 ultimate result. The proper preservative against these bane- 

 ful effects is the male iish, which is kept dried for the purpose 

 in salt, and worn in a bracelet upon the arm. And yet this 

 same iish, while in the sea, is not injurious, by its contact 

 even. The only animal that eats it without fatal consequences, 

 is the mullet r the sole perceptible result being that its llesh 

 is rendered more tender thereby, but deteriorated in flavour, 

 and consequently not so highly esteemed. 



Persons when poisoned 21 by the sea-hare smell strongly of 

 the iish the iirst sign, indeed, by which the fact of their 

 having been so poisoned is detected. Death also ensues at the 

 end of as many days as the iish has lived : hence it is that, 

 as Licinius Macer informs xis, this is one of those poisons 

 which have no deiinite time for their operation. In India,** we 

 are assured, the sea-hare is never taken alive ; and, M'e are told 

 that, in those parts of the world, man, in his turn, acts as a 

 poison upon the iish, which dies instantly in the sea, if it is 

 only touched with the human finger. There, like the rest 

 of the animals, it attains a much larger size than it does 

 with us. 



CHAP. 4. MARVELS OF TUB ED SKA. 



Juba, in those books descriptive of Arabia, which he has 

 dedicated to Caius Caesar, the son of Augustus, informs us that 

 there are mussels 83 on those coasts, the shells of which are 

 capable of holding three semisextarii ; and that, on one occa- 

 sion, a whale,* 4 six hundred feet in length and three hundred 

 and sixty feet broad, '* made its way. up a river of Arabia, 



the Sea-hnre of the ancients is identified) in the immher of the animal 

 poisons, and re-marks that (as we find stated hy Cojlius Rhodiginus, 1>. 

 ixvi. c. 30) the Kmperor Titus was dispatched hy the agency of this 

 poison, administered to him hy the direction of h'is brother JJomitian. 

 Hist. Jut', vol. I. p. 51. litihn's F.d. 



20 Ath< iwus says, IJ. viii., that the Scarus pursues it and devours it. 



21 * Quihus impuctus cst.*' A curious expression; if indeed it is the 

 corrcet r< al;:i. 



'<" See U. ix. c. 72. 8 * Mituli. See B. ix. c. 74. 



2* "Cetos." 



24 Ajasson remarks, in confutation of this story, that there arc few 

 rivers iu Arabia of buch a breadth. 



