FISHES. 235 



wrapped in brown paper, and carried for three hours in a 

 person's pocket.* The Carp is so exceedingly tenacious of 

 life, that it is a common practice in Holland to keep it alive 

 for three weeks or a month, placed in wet moss, and in a net 

 kept in a cool place. A little water is occasionally thrown 

 over the net, and the fish are fed with bread steeped in milk. 



ERRORS AND TRADITIONS. To those who now enter on the 

 study of fishes, with access to the stores of knowledge accu- 

 mulated by earlier labourers, and having for their guidance 

 the light reflected from other departments of science, the 

 ideas with which some species of fish have been associated 

 cannot but seem strange, incongruous, and unreasonable. 

 But this assumption of superiority is one that a wider range 

 of study assuredly dispels; and it teaches us, at the same 

 time, to hold our own views with humility, seeing how great 

 were the errors of inquirers who were certainly not less able 

 nor less intelligent. The subject is one to which we can only 

 advert, yet it cannot but prove instructive. 



The Mackerel Midge, one of the most diminutive of our native 

 fishes (Motella glaucd), is only about an inch and a quarter 

 in length. "This seems," says Mr. Couch, "to be one of the 

 species spoken of by the older naturalists under the name of 

 apua, and which, from their minute size, and the multitudes 

 in which they sometimes appeared, they judged to be produced 

 by spontaneous generation from the froth of the sea, or the 

 putrefaction of marine substances."! The notions with 

 respect to the origin of Eels were not less fanciful. Aristotle 

 believed that they sprang from mud; Pliny, from fragments 

 which were separated from their bodies by rubbing against 

 rocks; others supposed that they proceeded from the carcasses 

 of animals ; Helmont believed that they came from May-dew, 

 and might be obtained from the following process: " Cut up 

 two tufts covered with May-dew, and lay one upon the other, 

 the grassy sides inwards, and thus expose them to the heat of 

 the sun ; in a few hours there will spring from them an infinite 

 quantity of E els . " Horse-hair, from the tail of a stallion, when 

 deposited in water, was formerly believed to be a never-failing 

 source of a supply of young E els.J The ear-bones of the Maigre 

 (Scioena aquila), a fish which attains the length of five or six 



* London's Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. vi. p. 330. 

 f Vide Tan-ell, vol. ii. p. 193. 

 | Idem, vol. ii. p. 289. 



