PLECTO&IirATHEANS. 409 



depicted in their eyes, trying to escape, the storm which 

 surprises them ; the yellowish and livid eels, which, like 

 huge aquatic serpents, are swimming on th^ surface of 

 the water, and pursuing their enemy : all these ohjects 

 presented, without doubt, the most picturesque assem- 

 blage imaginable. I remember the superb picture of a 

 horse entering a cavern, and frighted at the view of a 

 lion ; the expression of terror is not stronger there than 

 what we witnessed in this unequal contest .... When 

 the combat had lasted a quarter of an hour, the mules 

 and horses appeared less afirighted; they no longer 

 bristled up their mane, and the eye was less expressive of 

 suffering and fear ; they were no longer seen to fall 

 backwards ; and the eels, swimming with the body half 

 out of the water, and now fljong from the horses instead 

 of attacking them, began themselves, in their turn, to 

 approach the shore.' 



Poisonous Pish. 



After the above five orders of osseous or fibrous species 

 with complete and movable jaws, we come to the Plec- 

 tognatheans, i. e. fish characterized by their maxillary 

 bone being soldered on the side of the inter-maxiUary, 

 which alone forms the jaw, and to which the palate is 

 dovetailed by a suture with the cranium, without any 

 power of motion. In this section several poisonous 

 kinds occur : to one division belong those bristling bal- 

 loon-fish, Diodons and Tetraodons, which occasionally 

 ornament the ceilings of chemists' and curiosity-shops at 

 home, and abroad are placed as weathercocks on steeples 

 and high trees j to another, the beautifully variegated 

 tribe Balistes, which, from the feeble treble emitted by 

 its members when first caught, used to be called ' goats' 

 by the ancients, and now, for the like reason, 'old 



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