440 PROSE HALIEUTICS. 



sides — namely, that in the said river there he certain 

 worms or serpents with two fins of a side, sixty cubits 

 long, of colour blue, which be so strong that when the 

 elephants come into the river for drink, they catch fast 

 hold with their teeth, by their trunks or muzzles, and, 

 maugre their hearts, force them down under the water, 

 of such force and power they be.' These were no doubt 

 lampreys, seen through the microscope of a warm ima- 

 gination, and accordingly highly magnified. Aldrovandi 

 however, who also believes them to be lampreys, swallows 

 the story as he finds it, cubits and all, and seeks to jus- 

 tify Libonius's Gulbverism and Pliny's gullibility to the 

 reader, by gravely teUing him that all things attain to 

 grand dimensions in India : ' in India omnia grandiora 

 sunt.' 



Repudiating of course these giant impersonations of 

 the lamprey as altogether fabulous, our little cyclostome 

 presents himself to notice, with quite a sufficiency of re- 

 commendations to dispense with the aid of any orien- 

 talisms to set him ofi'. No animal in creation has 

 80 singular and sensitive a mouth, serving at once as a 

 prehensile instrument to secure, and an organ for the 

 trituration of food : the lamprey, in a sense peculiar to 

 himself, lives from hand to mouth, since these are both 

 one. The oral apparatus consists of a loose extensile 

 hp, which the fish can project in a circular manner, — 

 hence his name of ' cyclostome,' or round-mouth, — 

 and apply, like a boy's leathern sucker, to wood, stone, 

 or any other object he happens to have a design upon. 

 "Within the circle of this extensile lip, lies a nimble little 

 rasping tongue, stuck all over vrith points, and always 

 on the wag ; and as this sharp file works up and down 

 on the surface of whatever may be covered by the flat- 

 tened mouth, the result of its operations soon becomes 

 apparent, especially when, as it often happens, the scalp 

 of an unfortunate fislj is the subject of experiment. In 



