Mat 12. jyll. 



SCIENCE 



737 



etc. Professor Thompson notes that " while 

 fieXovrj in VI., 12, etc., is certainly the pipe- 

 fish, Syngnathus, here it may be assumed to 

 mean Belone acus, the garfish: Mod. Gk. 

 /8eA.ovt'8t, crapyawos, trapywvvos ; It. aguglia. 

 o-apytvos and p^ov-q are probably synonymous, 

 and one or other of them is interpolated." 

 But here, as elsewhere in the " History," the 

 Belone is undoubtedly the pipefish. The gar- 

 pike and pipefish are both very elongate and 

 have the preocular region extended and con- 

 sequently are sufficiently alike superficially to 

 contrast with other fishes. Assuming, then, 

 that the belone is the pipefish, the juxtaposed 

 sarginos (not mentioned elsewhere) might be 

 conjectured to be the garfish; the conjecture 

 is sustained by the fact that the garfish in 

 modern Greece and the archipelago bears the 

 names Sargannos and Sargonnus (as Pro- 

 fessor Thompson records), as well as Sargan- 

 nos and Zargana; these names are clearly but 

 slight variants of each other as well as from 

 Sarginos and the real similarity is scarcely 

 veiled by the vagaries of orthography. 



In the index. Professor Thompson distrib- 

 utes the references to helone under two cate- 

 gories, (1) the pipefish, 567', 571"; (2) the 

 garfish, 506^ 643\ 610', 616'. As already 

 indicated, we consider all the passages in 

 question to be referable to the pipefish, and 

 that alone. 



In book IX., Aristotle notices the halcyon 

 or kingfisher and especially the nest; he con- 

 jectures that " it is possibly made of the back- 

 bones of the " helone, which Professor Thomp- 

 son translates " garfish." In a note he adds : 

 '■ If we ask why of all fishes the fieXovrj is 

 specified, it may be because the backbone of 

 the garfish has a peculiar green colour." The 

 Grecian kingfisher, as Aristotle says, " is not 

 much larger than the sparrow," and the gar- 

 fish is a comparatively large animal and diffi- 

 cult to catch ; on the other hand, pipefishes are 

 small, readily obtainable in the vegetation 

 near the shore, and the partly desquamated 

 bodies are easily identifiable. 



The question of the nomenclature of the 

 helone and sarginos has been fully considered 

 in an article " On the Families of Synentog- 



nathous Pishes and their Nomenclature " in 

 the Proceedings of the United States National 

 Museum (1895, pp. 167-178). To this refer- 

 ence may be made for further details. 



Here we must bring our already too lengthy 

 review to a close, although many other passages 

 had been marked for comment or praise. The 

 review has been mostly confined to one class 

 because representatives of that class have been 

 most misunderstood and many species erro- 

 neously identified. Professor Thompson's ac- 

 quaintance with other classes has been greater 

 and he had some years ago published an excel- 

 lent book on Greek birds. 



The new " History of Animals " deserves 

 further commendation on account of its dress 

 as well as contents. It is printed in excellent 

 form, as would be expected, having come from 

 the Clarendon Press. A new feature, so far 

 as English editions are concerned, is the illus- 

 tration of various passages by apt and clear 

 figures (eleven in number) explanatory of the 

 Greek text which is subjoined. There are re- 

 markably few typographical errors. Such are 

 inevitable, however, in a work of its magni- 

 tude, and among them are the transposition 

 of the figures 1 and 2 in explanation of the 

 illustration of Squilla mantis (525"), 185 in- 

 stead of 1856 (568° note), and mormirus in 

 place of mormyrus (570" note). There is one 

 other lapsus to which attention may be called 

 because it is so often made by other writers. 



Professor Thompson has been misled several 

 times by a French custom of individuals or 

 families adding agnomina to their names. 

 The distinguished publicist and translator 

 into French of Aristotle's works, Jules Bar- 

 thelemy Saint-Hilaire, and the great French 

 naturalists, E. and I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,' 

 are all referred to only under their agnomina. 

 In conversation and " for short " the agnomen 

 would be generally dropped, Barthelemy only 

 being used for one and Geoffroy for the other. 

 Thus Cuvier, once the intimate associate of 



'The "G. St. Hilaire" of p. 612" (note) was 

 Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (father) and that 

 of p. 631" Isidore GeofiEroy Saint-Hilaire (son). 



