438 PROSE HAXIEUTICS. 



or pride, the trivial name for the small river lamprey. 

 Whenj however, our Anglo-Saxon appellative had, in 

 passing iato Italy, come to assume a Latin form, the 

 mistake soon crept in that it was bond fide Latin, and 

 etymologists accordingly set themselves to work to find 

 out what it meant. After a time, it was discovered by 

 the learned, and adopted by the simple, that lampetra 

 was derived ' a lambendo petras^ — from sucking stones, 

 a well-known propensity of the lampridse. This Latin 

 blunder, duly established and generally adopted, led, at 

 no very distant period, to a second : an ingenious ich- 

 thyologist, we believe somewhere about Queen Anne's 

 day, having coined and issued for the lamprey the Greek 

 designation ' petromyzon,' being the plain translation of 

 lampetra, this was as speedily adopted as the last, and 

 the popular, but as we see erroneous belief, was, and may- 

 hap stiU is, that Lampetra occurs in Pliny, and that Pe- 

 tromyzon may be found in Aristotle. With a variety of 

 classical misnomers which have been taken up by modem 

 authors from ancient sources, evidently without sufficient 

 consideration, it is not our purpose to intermeddle. There 

 are, however, two names, — a Greek one occurring in 

 Oppian, and a Latin one, employed both by Pliny and 

 Ausonius, which seem to be really the ancient represen- 

 tatives of the species now under review. That Pliny's 

 and Ausonius's mustela, or weasel, is to be interpreted 

 of the lamprey, there seems to be little doubt ; for, im- 

 primis, that fish is exactly portrayed by Ausonius under 

 this name, — 



Qui te natursB piimt color, atra supeme 

 Pvmota notant tergvun, quse lutea circuit iris, 

 Lubrica cseruleus perducit tergora fucus 

 Corporis ad medium farsim pinguesci, at ilEnc 

 TJsq^ue sub extremam squalet cutis arida caudam. 



Secondly, Pliny, in describing the mustela, mentions 

 that it is ' assuetus petris,' and of two kinds, differing 



