382 flint's NATUBAL HISTOET. [Book IX. 



that are covered witli crusts ; the kinds of which are thirty 

 in number. We shall, on another occasion," speak of each 

 indiridually ; but, for the present, we shall treat only of the 

 nature of the more remarkable ones. 



CHAP. 17. (15.) WHICH OF THE FISHES AKE OP THE LAKGESI SIZE. 



Tunnies are among the most remarkable for their size ; we 

 li^ve fbund one weighing as much as fifteen^" talents, the 

 breadth of its tail being five cubits and a palm." In some of 

 the rivers, also, there are fish of no less size, such, for instance, 

 M the silurus^" of the Nile, the isox'^ of the Ehenus, and the 



»use in B. xxrii. c. 51, Pliny speaks of 174 different kinds of &hes, and 

 iiere he says that the Crustacea are thirty in nomber. Daubenton speaks 

 )f the species of fishes as being 866 in number, while Lac^pede says that 

 le had examined more than a thousand, but that was far below the real 

 lumber. Cuvier mentions specimens of about 6000 kinds of &bes, in the 

 Cabinet du Eoi. Ajasson remarks upon the learned iuTestigations of 

 Cuvier on this subject, and his researches in Sumatra, Java, Kamschatka, 

 yfew Zealand, New Guinea, and elsewhere, for the purpose of increasing 

 he list of the known kinds of fishes. 



>9 B. XXX. c. 53. 



™ About 1200 pounds. Cetti, in his " Natural History of Sardinia," vol. 

 ii. p. 134, says that tunnies weighing a thousand pounds are far from un- 

 ommon, and that they have beentaken weighing as much as 1800 poimds. 



*' The same as the Latin " dodrans," or about nine inches. This pafi- 

 age is taken almost verbatim from Aristotle, Hist. Anim. c. 34. Cuvier 

 ays that this passage, although like the preceding one, taken from Aris- 

 otle, is much more incredible, (though Lacepede, by the way, disputes 

 Pliny's statement as to the weight of the tunny). "A distance," Cuvier 

 ays, " of from seven to eight feet from one point of the fork of the tail 

 the other, would denote a fish twenty-five feet in length ; and it must be 

 bserved, that most of the MSS. of PUiiy say two cubits." Aristotle, how- 

 ver, beyond a doubt says flve. 



'" Now universally recognized as the sly sUurus, or sheat-fish, called in 

 he United States the horn-pout, the Silurus glanis of Linnseus. On this 

 brmerly much-discussed question, Cuvier has an interesting Note. " There 

 an now be no longer any doubt as to the silurus ; it is evidently synony- 

 aons with the 'glanis ' of Aristotle ; as we find Pliny, in c. 17 and 51, 

 giving the same characteristics of the silurus, as Aristotle does of the 

 ;lanis. Hist. Anim. B. viii. 0.-20, and B. ix. c. 37 ; such, for instance, aa 

 he care it takes of ite young, and the effects produced upon it by the dog- 



Ish and the approach of storms. It is easy to prove also that it is not 

 he sturgeon, [as Hardouin thought it to be], but the fish that is still called 

 "irus' by the naturalists, the 'wels'or 'schaid' of the Germans, the 

 iith ' of the Swiss, &c." 

 Cuvier remarks, that it is by no means clear what fish is meant by 



