732 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 854 



But the glanis perishes when struck in shallow 

 water by the serpent called a dragon. 

 Creswell, p. 219 (VIII., xx., 12). 



. . . the glanis, from its swimming near the 

 surface, appears to be star-struck by the dog-star, 

 and it is stupefied by loud thunder. The carp suf- 

 fers in the same way, but not so severely. The 

 glanis, in shallow water, is often destroyed by the 

 dragon-serpent. 

 Thompson, 602", lines 22-26. 



For instance, the sheat-fish just before the rising 

 of the Dog-star, owing to its swimming near 

 the surface of the water, is liable to sunstroke, 

 and is paralysed by a loud peal of thunder. The 

 carp is subject to the same eventualities, but in a 

 lesser degree. The sheat-fish is destroyed in great 

 quantities in shallow waters by the serpent called 

 the dragon. 



Taylor and Creswell both attribute remark- 

 able offensive powers to the dog-star instead of 

 considering the reference to it as an index of 

 season.^ The notice about the dragon ser- 

 pent gives an undue air of mystery and 

 weirdness.^ A water snake may seize a cat- 

 fish as well as other fishes, but sometimes with 

 a fatal result. (The present writer, on one 

 occasion on the shore of the Potomac River 

 near Washington, found a large water snake 

 {Natrix sipedon) dead with a catfish's trunk 

 in its mouth but the head outside and the 

 pectoral spines immovably outstretched, one 

 piercing the snake's skin behind the corner of 

 the mouth and the other outside.) 



Professor Thompson has chosen to use the 

 name sheat-fish as an equivalent of glanis. 

 That name has been in limited use for several 

 centuries as the designation of the Silurus 

 glanis of Europe and has given trouble to 

 lesicographers. For example, in the " Century 

 Dictionary," it is derived " appar. < sheat'', 

 a shote, -\- fish."* It was given by Willughby, 



' The dog-star has been long used as a denom- 

 inator of time. For example, Linnaeus in 1741, in 

 his autobiographical sketch, records that in the 

 dog-days he reached Eouen, on his way to Stock- 

 holm, which he reached in September. 



' The ' ' dragon ' ' of the History of Animals was 

 apparently nothing more than an ordinary snake 

 to which extraordinary habits were attributed by 

 popular belief. 



• Slieat- is defined ' ' The Shad. Wright. [Prov. 



in 1686, as the English synonym of the Ger- 

 man Shaid or Schaid. Schaidfisch is an 

 equivalent in northern Switzerland (round 

 Lake Constance or Bodensee) for the same 

 species and doubtless sheat-fish has been de- 

 rived from that name. The English form, to 

 a very limited extent (as by Arthur Adams in 

 1854), has been used in a wider sense. Inas- 

 much, however, as glanis is a well-known spe- 

 cific name and the fish so called by Aristotle 

 is quite a different species from the true sheat- 

 fish, adherence to the practise of his predeces- 

 sors in retaining glanis would be deemed de- 

 sirable by many. 



n 



Aristotle has been frequently and recently 

 called " the founder of systematic zoology." 

 A very distinguished anatomist (Richard 

 Owen) even claimed that " the Zootoka of 

 Aristotle included the same outwardly diverse 

 but organically similar beings as constitute 

 the Mammalia of modern naturalists." All 

 such claims are baseless. In view of the fre- 

 quency with which they and the like are re- 

 peated, however, explanation of the scope of 

 Aristotle's work is in place. 



A striking example of Aristotle's failure to 

 understand principles of natural classification, 

 and fundamental characteristics of animal 

 groups, is exemplified by his treatment of the- 

 group of Selachians. This, as now accepted, 

 is a very natural division to which class rank 

 has been assigned by some of the best modern 

 naturalists, but Aristotle has ranked with 

 them the angler or fishing frog (Lophius) 

 which is only a slightly modified acanthop- 

 terygian fish; he did this merely because it 

 was a flat flabby fish and he approximated it 

 to the torpedo because that also was fiat and 

 flabby. The fact that he repeatedly asso- 



Eng.]," Slwte^ "same as Shot''," the trout or 

 grayling, and Shote" "a young hog; a pig" and 

 ' ' a thriftless, worthless fellow. ' ' In the old edi- 

 tions of the great "Greek-English Lexicon" by 

 Liddell, Scott and Drisler, glanis is defined "a 

 kind of Shad. ' ' The glanis belongs to a widely 

 distinct order from the shad and trout and is not 

 at all like them. 



