200 THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS. [rt. VIII. 



and when they increase they are devoured by other fish, and 

 especially by the acharims. 



3. The cestreus (mullet) is the most greedy and insatiable 

 of fish, so that its abdomen is distended, and it is not good for 

 food unless it is poor. When alarmed it hides its head, as if 

 its whole body were thus concealed ; the sinodon also is car- 

 nivorous, and eats the malacia. This fish and the channa 

 often eject their stomachs as they pursue small fish, for 

 their stomach is near the mouth, and they have no oesophagus. 

 Some are simply carnivorous, as the dolphin, sinodon, chry- 

 sophrys, the selache and malacia; others, as the phycis, 

 cobius, and the rock-fish, principally feed upon mud and 

 fuci, and bryum, and what is called cauliou, and any matter 

 which may be produced in the sea. The phycis eats no 

 other flesh than that of the shrimps. They also frequently eat 

 each other, as I before remarked, and the greater devour the 

 less. It is a proof that they are carnivorous, that they are 

 captured with bait made of flesh. 



4. The aniia, tunny, and labrax generally eat flesh, 

 though they also eat sea-weed. The sargus feeds after the 

 trigla when the last has buried itself in the mud and 

 departed, for it has the power of burying itself, then the 

 sargus comes and feeds and prevents all those that are 

 weaker than itself from approaching. The fish called 

 scarus is the only one which appears to ruminate like quad- 

 rupeds. Other fish appear to hunt the smaller ones with 

 their mouths towards them, in this way they naturally swim ; 

 but the selachea, dolphins and cetacea throw themselves on 

 their back to capture their prey, for their mouth is placed 

 below them, for this reason the smaller ones escape, or if 

 not they would soon be reduced in number ; for the swiftness 

 of the dolphin and its capacity for food appear incredible. 



5. A few eels in some places are fed upon mud, and any 

 kind of food which may be cast into the water, but gene- 

 rally they live upon fresh water, and those who rear eels 

 take care that the water which flows off and on upon the 

 shallows in which they live may be clear, where they make 

 the eel preserves. For they are soon suffocated if the water 

 is not clean, their gills being very small. For this reason 

 those who seek for them disturb the water. In the Stry- 

 mon they are taken about the time of the rising of the 



