Cuar. X.] OPINIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS. 345 
in ARIsToTLE’s treatise De Respiratione!, where he 
mentions the strange discovery of living fish found be- 
neath the surface of the soil, “tv iyOdav of moddol 
Siow év Th yh, axwwnrtifovtes pévrot, kal eiploKovTar opuT- 
Towevor;” and in his History of Animals he conjectures 
that in ponds periodically dried the ova of the fish so 
buried become vivified at the change of the season.? 
Heroporvs had previously hazarded a similar theory to 
account for the sudden appearance of fry in the Egyptian 
marshes on the rising of the Nile; but the cases are not 
parallel. Tutornrastvs, the friend and pupil of Aris- 
totle, gave importance to the subject by devoting to it 
his essay Ilep) tis rdv iyObwv ev lnp@ Siamorns, De 
Piscibus in sicco degentibus. In this, after adverting 
to the fish called exocetus, from its habit of going on 
shore to sleep, “ azo Tis xourfs,” he instances the small 
fish (¢v@véua), that leave the rivers of India to wander 
like frogs on the land; and likewise a species found 
near Babylon, which, when the Euphrates runs low, 
leave the dry channels in search of food, “moving 
themselves along by means of their fins and tail.” He 
proceeds to state that at Heraclea Pontica there are 
places in which fish are dug out of the earth, “ dpuxrol 
Tov ixGvwv,” and he accounts for their being found 
under such circumstances by the subsidence of the 
rivers, “when the water being evaporated the fish 
gradually descend beneath the soil in search of mois- 
ture; and the surface becoming hard they are preserved 
in the damp clay below it, in a state of torpor, but are 
capable of vigorous movements when disturbed.” “In 
this manner, too,” adds Theophrastus, “the buried fish 
1 Chap. ix. * Lib. vi. ch. 15, 16, 17. 
