LABYEINTHIFORM PHARYNGEALS. 237 



shee liveth, yea even when the bankes are drie, and the 

 rivers gathered into narrow channels. By reason thereof 

 they are digged forth of the earth; and, as they say that 

 find them, alive they bee, as may appear by moving and 

 stirring of their bodies. The same author avoucheth 

 that in Paphlagonia there be digged out of the ground 

 certain land fishes that be excellent good meat and most 

 dehcate, but they be found in drie places remote from 

 the river, and whither no waters flow, whereby they are 

 forced to make the deeper trenches for to come by them. 

 Himself marvelleth how they should engender without 

 the help of moisture, howbeit he supposeth there be a 

 certain mineral! and naturall force therein, such as we 

 see to sweat out in pits, forasmuch as divers of them 

 have fishes found within them.^* 



To this abridged report from Theophrastus may be 

 added the no less circumstantial observations of much 

 more recent writers on the subject, who give the weight 

 of their authority in corroboration of what he asserts : 

 George Pabricius, in a letter to Gesner, and George 

 Agricola, in a treatise on subterranean animals, recapi- 

 tulate similar statements, and tell the same story. Fa- 

 bricius minutely describes, as belonging to this hypogean 

 race, ' a fish about one foot in length, and one inch 

 thick; above, deep cerulean, lighter on the under side 

 (which is minutely marked with dark dots, as if finely 

 pricked with a needle), and having certain oral appen- 

 dages porrect when immersed, and retracted when taken 

 from the water.' He gives two well-known localities for 

 this fish, both in the vicinity of the Elbe, and says that 

 the peasants dig them up in dry weather for household 

 provision, and that in wet weather the pigs feed upon 

 them in the fields, where they lie after the subsidence 

 of a flood littered over the ground like worms. George 



* Holland's Pliny. 



