The Angler. 353 



the taste of those who are on the look-out for affinities of habit 

 between bimana and quadrumana. The Oercopithecus fuligi- 

 nosus is an African monkey, and no doubt in its native haunts 

 it procures the larvae of Bilharzia magna from the same, or 

 from similar sources as those from whence our brethren in 

 Egypt procure the larvae of Bilharzia (Distoma) haematobium. 

 Animals lower in the scale do not appear to be liable to 

 attacks from this strangely organized genus of flukes, and as 

 yet we are uninformed as to the hosts which entertain it in 

 its larval condition. The adult fluke from man never exceeds 

 one-third of an inch, but the solitary example which we 

 obtained from the monkey was about an inch in length. 

 Griesinger conjectures that the young of Bilharzia exist in the 

 waters of the Nile, in the fishes which therein abound, or even 

 in bread, grain, and fruit; but, in our opinion, it is more 

 probable that the larvae, in the form of cercariae, rediae, and 

 sporocysts, will be found in certain gasteropod molluscs proper 

 to the localities from whence the adult forms have been 

 obtained. Our sooty host was, we understood, imported direct 

 from its native country, and was not bred in the Society's 

 gardens; had it been otherwise he would not, in all probability, 

 have been infested by Bilharzia magna. 



THE ANGLER. 



BY JONATHAN COUCH, F.L.S., ETC. 



This fish has been called the toadfish, frogfish, fishing frog- 

 monk, and sea-devil. It is the rana piscatrix and rana marina 

 of old writers, and lophius piscatrix of Linnaeus and Cuvier. It 

 appears also to be the fish which is described by Caius at the 

 end of the work Be Canibus Britannicis , under the name of 

 ceruchus ; but he does not seem to be aware that it had been 

 noticed by any other writer ; and indeed he may have been, as 

 he remarks, the first who gave a precise description of it. 



But the remarkable form of this fish in connection with its 

 still more remarkable manners, had attracted the attention of 

 observers of Nature from the earliest times ; and, strange to 

 say, at a time when imagination, superstition, and imposture 

 were united in ascribing to the inhabitants of the ocean myste- 

 rious properties — so that the circumstance of his inquiring into 

 their nature and structure was believed to be a sufficient proof 

 to show that Apuleius, the Roman writer of the famous romance 

 the Golden Ass, could be no other than a magician — and, when 



