352 PEOSE HALIETJTICS. 



the ass-fish canuot be the hake ; for, in the first place, 

 the hake has no barhels;* secondly, he employs force, not 

 stratagem, for his livelihood ; thirdly, he is by no means 

 a sluggard in disposition ; neither, fourthly, does he hide 

 himself from observation in the sand ; fifthly, he does 

 not carry large stones in his' head; nor, lastly, is his 

 heart (unless metaphorically, and after the. manner of 

 gluttons generally) centred in his stomach, but in its 

 usual place. All these difiBculties led a distinguished 

 French naturalist of the old school to abandon the mer- 

 lucius in favour of a more promising fish belonging to 

 another subdivision of the present genus. To Belon is 

 the glory due of having found, on the Cretan coast, a 

 gadean which, in many important particulars, certainly 

 accords with the ass-fish of the ancients, and notably so 

 with Aristotle's first requisite — these oral appendages we 

 call barbels, of which it has in fact three, two attached 

 to the under and one to the upper lip : another circum- 

 stance apparently much in favour of Belon's view is, that 

 the Cretans call this fish gadeisparo, or ass-fish. 



Having thus half-persuaded one's reader and self that 

 this must be the old, lost donkey at last, it may seem 

 almost captious to ask why, were this frequenter of the 

 Cretan coast indeed that asellus redivivus, does he only 

 hug the shores of Crete, and absent himself from his 



* The presence or absence of these appurtenances, and differ- 

 ences of the back fins, have caused the genus gadus to be divided 

 into several subgenera, as follows : — 



1. Cod, haddock, dorse, which have three dorsal and two 



anal fins, and one barbel at the lower jaw. 



2. Whiting, coal-fish, poUack, possessed of three dorsal and 



two anal fins, and reo barbels. 



3. Hake, which shows two dorsal and one anal fin, and no 



barbels ; and, 



4. Ling, with the fins as in the last, with one or more bar- 



bels, according to the species. 



