ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BLTLLETIN 



RONDKLKT, laj4 



CKSNHR, l.-.KT 



MOUFFET. ll«l 



GOLDS.MI'l'll. \Kii 



THE SEA-HORSE IN ANCIENT 



HISTORY. 



Bi) Raymond C. Osbi'rx. 



THESE strange little fishes apparently in- 

 terested mankind in former centuries as 

 much as they do at present and nearly 

 all the older naturalists had something to say 

 of them. To be sure, they knew but little about 

 them, but lack of knowledge is not necessarily 

 a hindrance to a writer, and apparentlj' their 

 ignorance only gave freer rein to their imagina- 

 tion. 



For one thing, they could not make up their 

 minds where to place it. and as the term "fish" 

 was applied to nearly all aquatic animals, as it 

 often is today, it is not possible to determine 

 just what they thought of its relationships. 

 Rondelet {De Piscibus Mariiiis, ISS^) does not 

 discuss it with the other fishes, but places it be- 

 tween a crustacean and a starfish, in the section 

 on "Insects and Zoophytes." Ciesner (Historia 

 Animalium, 1587) gets around all the difficulties 

 of classification at once by arranging all the 

 aquatic animals in alphabetical order, so in this 

 work Hippocampus appears between another 

 fish, Hepatus, and the Hippopotamus. 



The accompanying illustrations are taken 

 from the works of Rondelet and Gesner men- 

 tioned; from Mouffet (Theatiiim Insectoriim, 

 1634), and from Goldsmith's "Animated Na- 

 ture," edition of 1822. All of these are good 

 for their time, but no particular advance in the 

 interpretation of their structure is shown. In 

 fact, the figure from Goldsmith, while much the 

 finest plate, is poorer in other respects than 



Rondelet's as the filaments are not shown and 

 the dorsal fin is exaggerated to resemble a 

 horse's mane. Mouffet shows both sexes, but, 

 as far as I have been able to discover, he gives 

 no discussion, so it is impossible to tell whether 

 he considered them different kinds or whether 

 he meant to show the sexes (the fact that the 

 male carries the egg-sac, being liable to misin- 

 terpretation on this point). 



It is amusing to note that the older writers 

 were much concerned with the poisonous quali- 

 ties (!) and the medicinal virtues (!) of the 

 sea-horse. Thus Rondelet devotes the major por- 

 tion of four quarto pages (in Latin of course) 

 to a discussion of these matters. He gravely 

 quotes from the Greek writer Dioscorides (first 

 and second centuries A. D.) and from the Ro- 

 man Aelianus (third century A. D.) and others, 

 the interesting information that the ashes of 

 the sea-horse, administered in wine, produce 

 spasmodic coughing, hot flushes in the head, 

 discharges from the nostrils of a fishy odor, 

 swelling of the abdomen, and eventuallv death. 

 If perchance an}' should recover, such persons 

 have ever afterward a strong desire for the prox- 

 imity of the water and for continual bathing. 



Used as a medicine, however, the ashes of 

 the sea-horse mixed with oil of marjoram or 

 with liquid ])itch and rubbed on cures baldness 

 of the form known as alopecia, while mixed with 

 water it is a cure for canker and leprosy. Ad- 

 ministered internally it counteracts the poison 

 {sic) of the sea-hare, and is a sovereign remedy 

 for the bite of a mad dog ! 



How such peculiar notions with regard to 

 these dainty little fishes could arise is a matter 



