PEBCID^ OE PERCHES. 117 



and tencli with the savage pike, would be singular were 

 it not easily explained without having recourse to animal 

 magnetism, by the slime of the one and the spines of 

 the other. On the Nile,* the crocodile, a mightier 

 tyrant than the pike, shows the same forbearing favour 

 to the perch, and no doubt for the same reason. His 

 prickly lophoderme is indeed a formidable affair; nor 

 was.it unadvisedly that the Saxons represented one 

 of their gods (an old man holding in the left hand a 

 chaplet of roses and in the right a wheel) standing 

 Avith naked feet on the back of a perch, as an emblem of 

 patience in adversity and constancy in trial ! t These 

 spines have been known to produce fatal consequences : 

 a young man catching a perch in his hand while bath- 

 ing, and sportively putting it into his mouth, was choked 

 by the fish getting into his throat, and died in terrible 

 agonies before any assistance could be obtained. The 

 roe of the perch consists of a concatenation of eggs 

 knit J together into meshwork, according to Cuvier, by 

 means of a strong mucus, and, as Strabo says, bearing 

 a resemblance to frog-spawn. 



As perch is a very common fish, it is singular that 

 heraldry should not have made more use of itj one 

 family alone, of the name of Oldfield, bears three perch 

 as an armorial distinction. § 



The Stinging Weever. 



Draco marinus ad spinse suse qua ferit venenum, ipse impositus, 

 vel cerebro poto prodest. — Pliny. 



It is not a safe thing to etymologize in a foreign lan- 

 guage. An Italian, who regards weever and fever as the 



* Strabo. t Fabricius. 



t ' Pom- or five of these eggs are enclosed in one common mem- 

 brane, giving to tte mass tbe appearance of hexagonal meshes ; 

 each egg is about the size of a poppy-seed.' 

 Moule. 



