STtJEGEON. 465 



for its sturgeon ; whilst others^ rejecting both, and re- 

 solved, if possible, to hellenicize the name, bent their 

 scapulse over their Scapulas, till lighting upon the word 

 o-reipa, a keel, they deemed all farther research unneces- 

 sary, for what, they asked, could better than a keel re- 

 present the carinated form of this fish ? Of these three 

 several derivations the reader can scarcely be said to have 

 a choice ; the first is obviously the correct one ; of the re- 

 maining two it may be remarked that the .last is wholly 

 untenable, as no Greek or Latin author (melioris sevi) 

 makes use of the word sturio, whilst the surmise of 

 Jovius, though not absolutely impossible, is, to speak 

 in plain words, so unusual a specimen of catachrestic 

 synecdochism, as to be scarcely admissible. The older 

 really classical designations for this fish are, Acipenser, 

 Helops, and Silurus, which last is certainly from the 

 Greek aeim, I shake, and ovph, a tail, and may be fa- 

 miliarly rendered ' wagtaU;' but these, its orthodox, as 

 well as the apocryphal synonym huso, refer probably 

 not to any individual species of the subgenus SUuridse, 

 but to several totally distinct species. Even these weU- 

 ascertained names however have been the subject of con- 

 troversy ; and no wonder, since Latin authors often con- 

 found, under the same name, very difierent fish. In the 

 present instance, the silurus of Juvenal, and that of 

 Ausonius, cannot possibly be accommodated to the same 

 individual. The wagtaO of the Moselle was of mon- 

 ster dimensions, and is indeed apostrophized by the first 

 of these poets under the title of 'mitis balsena,' the 

 ' gentle whale,' of that river. This, therefore, cannot 

 be the 'fracta de merce sUurus' which Crispinus hawked 

 about the streets before his preferment at Eome.* 



Doubts, too, have been entertained by ichthyologists 

 of eminence, whose opinion is entitled to respect, whe- 



* Vide Silurus. 



x3 



