MTJR^NIDiE. 407 



or gold service-dish), but to rear, to tame, and to teach. 

 Plutarch speaks of those that L. Crassus brought up al- 

 most by hand, who acknowledged his presence by spring- 

 ing out of the water whenever he came near ; he was wont 

 to deck them with rings and personal ornaments such as 

 men give their mistresses, and Porphyrins says, that 

 their loss was a severer grief to him than the death of his 

 three children. Antonia, too, exhibited hers at Bauli, 

 near Naples, in the grounds of Drusus, bedizened in the 

 same way ; and poor Hortensius the orator never quite 

 got over the decease of one favourite mursena. In short, 

 aU the great men vied with each ether in this extravagant 

 fish passion, and, says Cicero, 'deemed no moment of 

 their Hves more happy than when these creatures first 

 came to eat out of their hands.^ 



The noble family of Licinii, as we learn from Macro- 

 bius and Varro, to express their admiration for this fish, 

 took the name of Mursena, in addition to their own, 

 just as, out of compliment to the Aurata (golden-head), 

 the Sergii added that designation to their patrician pa- 

 tronymic. 



. Before taking leave of the mursenas, a few words re- 

 main to be said of that wonderful fish, the Gymnotus. 

 The gymnotus belongs to a small electric coterie com- 

 posed of five individuals, whereof three belong to the 

 bony, and two to the cartilaginous tribes of the deep. 

 The cartilaginous electricians are a tetredon, and the 

 narke skait : the bony species are a trichiuris, a silurus, 

 and the gymnotus electricus. Coercive powers equal to 

 those once falsely ascribed to the stay-fish, and exercised 

 on animal movements, are actually inherent in these 

 species, which, though scarcely so big as a large conger, 

 can stay the furious shark rushing after his prey, stun 

 leviathan at a distance, and lay the fiery courser low be- 

 side him. As no one has given a more lively picture 

 of this formidable creature's powers and mode of attack 



