THE LAMPEEY. 437 



cuticle followed, and when this flaying process was con- 

 cluded, all the patients slowly recovered.* 



The Lamprey. 



Quaeque, per Dlyricum, per stagna binominis Istri, 

 Spumarum indioiis oaperis, Mustela, natantum, 

 In nostrum subvecta fretum, ne lata Moselse 

 Flumina tain oelebri defraudarentur altimno. — Auson. 



This excellent and widely-distributed fish, a true citi- 

 zen of the world, and found, as Cuvier informs us, in 

 almost every clime, inhabiting the Japanese Sea, the 

 salt waters which skirt the shores of Southern America, 

 the Northern Ocean, and most of its great tributary 

 streams, abounding, and particularly good in the Medi- 

 terranean, has descended to us from antiquity with dubi- 

 ous names, and, despite its merits, without one laudatory 

 comment from tha stylus of Apicius ! The actual Greek 

 and Latin names for lamprey are palpable forgeries, and 

 though no doubt this, like other prime fish at Rome, 

 was served up as the king of cooks enjoined, either in 

 Alexandrian gravy — jus Alexandrinum, or 'aux fines 

 herbes,' StA ^oravwv, still there is no name in his ich- 

 thyological bill of fare applicable to the present species. 

 Nothing can better show the mistakes and blunders into 

 which etymology, unguided by sound discretion, is prone 

 to run, than the resolve to trace all fish-names to a Greek 

 and Latin source. The real derivation of the Itahan 

 word 'lampetra' (through lamproie, lampryon, lampe- 

 tron) is our own word lamprey; and this, again, is ob- 

 viously itself derived from lang, long, and prey, prick, 



* It was probably from eating the Uver, thus ascertained to 

 be deleterious, that the crew of the 'Eeward' suffered in 1802 in 

 her voyage from Jamaica, when ' many lives were lost, in conse- 

 quence, as was said, of partaking of a shark.' 



