128 PROSE HALIEUTICS. 



Toles, pesce-prete, or priest-fish. The other appellatives, 

 of psammodytes, or sand-fishj r/fiepoKotro';, day-dozer, 

 and vvKTsph, the hat, correspond to other characteristic 

 traits in his natural history. Tlie old Greek name em- 

 ployed hy Aristotle, and transcribed unchanged by Pliny, 

 IS KaXKiwvvfio'i : not that this fish has anything to do 

 with beauty, for a more hideous finned fright is not 

 brought to market ; but the Greek compound, according 

 to Hesychius, bears, besides its obvious, a more recondite 

 meaning, which tallies so well with the conformation of 

 the fish, that the sailors at Marseilles have coined two 

 expressive patois words, which seem, though of course 

 they are not, a translation of the Aristotelian epithet ; 

 an epithet which, according to Eondolet, ' no modest ma- 

 tron of Marseilles would ever think of pronouncing, on 

 account of its exceeding impropriety.' 



So much for the names. As to the person of the pos- 

 sessor of these various aliases, he is, in a word, hideous ; 

 and may be said to abuse the privileged ugliness even 

 of the tadpole, whose general figure and contour he ac- 

 curately represents ; a pair of very malign, unpriestly, 

 glaring eyes, misdirected upwards ; the broad gutter of 

 a mouth which runs immediately below the orbits ; a 

 long vermicular process for inveigling unwary fish, vibra- 

 ting from to time, like a serpent's tongue, in front of a 

 pair of gaping jaws, add considerably to the ill-favoured 

 appearance of the caUionymus ; whilst two sharp spines 

 bristling on the shoulders help to render his person yet 

 more unattractive : such is the repulsive exterior of this 

 fish. The interior organization presents a remarkable 

 phenomenon, which, from the time when Aristotle first 

 called attention to it, to this hour, has attracted the 

 attention and excited the siu'prise of all who have wit- 

 nessed an autopsy of this fish. On cutting him open, 

 an immense white Hver at once presents itself to riew, 

 and attached to it a large pendulous bag, distended with 



