THE GUENARD GROUP. I49 



is that of ' cuckoo/ the correctness of which name is 

 sanctioned by science, ' T. cuculus ' being the printed la- 

 bel aflSxed to bottled specimens of the red gurnard; but 

 the French word grondin is, we opine (due deference 

 being paid to the ear), a much better onomatopoeia than 

 cuckoo. Both the cuckoo or small red, and the larger 

 sapphirine gurnard (T. hirundo), are common at market, 

 and not to be despised at table : they seem always to 

 have enjoyed a fair, though never a splendid reputation ; 

 ' neque omnino plebeise neque etiam nobilioribus com- 

 parandae,' as we have somewhere seen them described 

 by a connoisseur whose Latin in free translation may be 

 rendered ' a good family, but not a company fish.' Hip- 

 pocrates, by permitting a restricted use of the flesh to 

 invalids, gives by implication an opinion favourable to 

 its wholesomeness and digestibility ; the fibre, however, 

 being over-firm, and requiring a good gastric juice to 

 dissolve and chemify it properly, no discreet modern 

 physician would care to incur the responsibility of re- 

 commending gurnards to delicate invalids, with so many 

 better substitutes in. the market. Those who dine with- 

 out doctor's counsel often eat these fish stuft'ed and served 

 in a rich gravy sauce : the most approved mode, how- 

 ever, and that practised from the very earliest down to 

 the present period, has been to marinate — i. e. first to 



' Totum corpus,' says Commerson, ' muco squalidum est et uloe- 

 rosum.' Its head and limbs are enveloped as it were in a sack ; 

 a thick skin, soft, spongy, altogether wrinkled and verrucose 

 like that of a leper, variegated without any order by little clouds 

 of whitish, grey, brown, and divers other tints. Sometimes it is 

 almost black, and is always gluey and disagreeable to the touch ; 

 two small eyes are almost lost in the deep-sunk sockets of a 

 huge cavernous head. The dorsal appendages constitute a series . 

 of small tubercles rather than a fin properly so called ; the broai5 

 and short pectorals appear intended to surround the neck like a 

 friU, rather than to serve as organs of natation ; like most ill-fa- 

 voured things, its tenacity to life is great. 



