RUMINATION OF THE SCARUS 155 
kai guxia dAXa, the difference between which seems according 
to Aristotle merely one of size. 
If a poll of writers on Fishing and of practical Pisciculturists 
were taken to-day, a large majority would vote that sea-fish 
do not eat seaweed, but feed on the Javvg, and other minute 
insects in or on the various alge or seaweeds. But against this 
opinion is arrayed the authority of Darwin and Wallace, who 
state that various species of Scarus do browse, and do graze 
on seaweed, and some of them exclusively on coral.! 
The Skaros (according to Aristotle) was the only fish which 
seemed to ruminate,? whose food was seaweed, and teeth, 
set in deep saw-edged jaws, were not sharp and interlocking, 
like those of all other fish, but resembled those of a parrot, as 
its beak resembled that of a parrot.4 
From the seeming to ruminate of Aristotle we reach in later 
writers like Oppian, I. 134 ff., and Ovid, Hal., 119, the positive 
assertion that the scarus dd ruminate.® 
Is it not possible, if a mere angler may hazard a suggestion 
on scientific points, that the belief of modern writers and pisci- 
culturists is not far out, and that while some of the Scavi do 
browse and graze exclusively on coral, and some sometimes 
on seaweed, they do this to obtain as food only the minute 
larve, which their so-called rumination helps them to separate 
from the seaweed or coral ? § 
A second very practical argument against the reading 
musco suggests itself. Let us allow that some sea fish do eat 
not only alge but moss: even then, why should our Scavus 
1 Voyage of the Beagle, ch. 20: ‘' Two species of fish of the genus scarus, 
which are common here (Keeling Island), exclusively feed on coral.’ Sir R. 
Owen, “‘ The anterior teeth are soldered together and adapted to the habits 
and exigences of a tribe of fishes which browse on the lithophytes, that clothe 
the pehie of the sea, just as ruminant quadrupeds crop the herbage of the 
dry land.” 
2 .N.H., 11.17: pédvos ixOds done? unpuxdew. Cf., however, N. H., IX. 50. 
8 VIII. 2, 13. 
4 Arist, N. H., II. 13. Pliny, XI. 61. ‘ Piscium omnibus (dentes) 
serrati, preter scarum: huic uni aquatilium plani.” 
§ In VII. 113, we again find Athenzus misrepresenting Aristotle. 
6 “This idea of rumination,” according to Mr. Lones, op. cit., p. 237, 
“by the parrot wrasse (Scarus cretensis), which is clearly the Skaros of the 
Ancients, probably arose from its grazing or cropping off marine plants, 
and grinding them down, assisted by its having a strongly walled stomach ” 
(cf. the functions of the gizzard of a fowl) with which, out of the myriads of 
M 
