THE LAMPBBY. 439 



chiefly in size; that one inhabits fresh, the other salt 

 water ; which passage obviously has reference to the pride 

 or river lamprey, and to the proper or sea lamprey. 

 Thirdly, the name itself strongly countenances this view, 

 for what fish is so like a weasel, not only as to colour 

 and markings, but also in his habits and proceedings, 

 as the lamprey ? When once fastened to a rock, there 

 he sticks, sucking away with pertinacity, as though he 

 would prove the fallacy of the old proverb, and succeed 

 in extracting blood even out of a stone. Under the 

 Greek name 'echeneis,^* stay-ship, Oppian has given a 

 correct account of the lamprey : — 



Slender Ms shape, Ms length a cubit ends, 

 No beauteous spot the gloomy race commends : 

 An eel-like clinging kind, of dusky looks. 

 His jaws display tenacious rows of hooks ; 

 The sucking fish beneath, with secret chains 

 Within his teeth, the sailing ship detains.f 



The boneless eel, eyxeXv^ aTrvp7]vo<; of Archestratus, 

 was, no doubt, the lamprey. Strabo^'s ' Libyan leeches, 

 with perforated bronchise, which ascended rivers,' were 

 also, no doubt, lampreys i though the venial license to 

 be conceded to a poet, swells into open Hcentiousness in 

 a geographer, when he stretches the original measure- 

 ment of four feet to twelve. Elsewhere we find the 

 number of feet, like Falstaff's men in buckram, run on 

 increasing, till one Statins Libonius is not ashamed to 

 assert, nor one Pliny to quote, the following : — ' Within 

 Ganges, a river of India, there be fishy snouted and 

 tailed dolphins, fifteen cubits long, called platanistse, 

 and Statins Libonius reporteth as strange a thing be- 



* The Latin name for this fish is 'remora' (from remoror, I 

 delay), and it was considered no good augury to encounter one in 

 bathing, during a love or a law-suit, or any other business that re- 

 quired despatch. 



t Opp. trans, by J. Jones. 



