280 Mr. E. W. (jiulger on the 



made heavy enough to do." Tliis, liowever, seems to be 

 taken I'roin Pliny. 



In the sayings of Pantagrnel, Rabelais (1553), iu Book IV. 

 Chapter 62, has tiie following: — "....an Echeneis or 

 Heniora, a silly, weakly Ksh, iu spite of" all tiie winds that 

 blow from the thirty-two points of the compass, will iu the 

 midst of a hurricane make you the bigijest first-rate remain 

 stock still, as if she were bcalmcd, or the blustering tribe 

 had blown their last." And again, in Hook V. Cliapter 26: 

 ". . . . there (iu the country ot" Satin) I saw a lieniora, a 

 little fish called by the Greeks Echeneis, near a big ship 

 which was motionless although under full sail, on the high 

 sea." 



We now come to Rondelet (1558), who attempts to show 

 that the retardation of ships might have been effected by the 

 Eeheueis of I'liny, the great shell-fish of Mucian, or the eel 

 ol Oppian. Indeed, he assevei'ates (page 313) that he has 

 known a lamprey to thus hold back a boat : "... it [Oppiau's 

 eel] stops it and holds it [a boat] back ; a thing which 

 corresponds to our lamprey, and which I have known 

 through expeiience, for if it |)uts its mouth against a boat it 

 stops it, and 1 have seen it thus." Then he adds, " There is 

 no need to marvel that various fishes are called by diU'erent 

 authors by the same name, nor that the same fish be called 

 by many and divers names, for that ofteu happens." For 

 the rest, R(m(lelct quotes and comments on the accoimts of 

 Pliny and others on the true Echeneis (pp. 33Jl-5), but adxls 

 nothing of himself. More might be expected of this great 

 ichthyolojiist ; but it seems that he never saw the fish (he 

 gives no figure of it) and knew nothing of it at first-hand. 



Courad Gesuer was the greatest of the encyclopedic 

 writers of natural history, and his * Historia Animalinm,' 

 Hooks I.-Illl., was published Hasel, 1551-1558 ■^. In 

 Hook nil. he discfMirscs at considerable length "Con- 

 cerning Echeneis or Ronora," but there is nothing in his 

 writings to indicate that he ever saw the fish. He adds no 

 new data ; but this section of his book is of value because 

 ill it he quotes a large number of the writers previously 

 cited in this paper. Howevi r, even here his value to the 

 student of ichthyological arclueology is crippled by the fact 



* [t will be iiolfd t!iat the works cited of botii Gesiier and Uoudelet 

 are dated JooS, and yet (itsuer quotes lioadelet at considerable length. 

 Hiiwever, the appaix-nl discrepancy disa])pear.s when it is remembered 

 that Iiondelet's ' L'lUstoire Entiere des Poissons ' is but a translation 

 into hi-s native French of his original work first published in Latin iu 

 1554. 



