280 ON POISONOUS FISHES AND FISH-POISONS. 



This, with some trifling differences in the dentition, forms their class cha- 

 racter. (C. & V., Hist. Natur. des Poissons, vol. ii.) 



The Lachnolaimus caninus, the hog-fish, called the dog-toothed hog-fish, 

 is set down among the number of those that are casually poisonous. Speaking 

 of Parra's figure of this fish, Cuvier says, " L'auteur assure que sa chair est 

 suspecte." It is more uniformly of a deep roseate red than the other species 

 of Lachnolaimus, the suillus, dux, and aigula, being devoid of any blackened 

 mark upon the flank, and without any brown upon the dorsal fin, or any 

 purple on the nape. The hog-fish, properly so called, the Lachnolaimus 

 suillus, is one of the most delicious of market fishes; but as, in common with 

 all its alliances of the Labroides, it feeds on small shell-fish, on sea-eggs and 

 crabs, for which sort of food it is well organised, by having the throat 

 coated with a perfect nap of teeth like velvet, with elongated front prongs, 

 for prising off the living prey from the rocks, a species may subsist on things 

 deteriorating the flesh, while the genus may be not so characterised. (C. & 

 V., vol. xiii., liv. xvi., ch. vi.) 



I have no means of ascertaining why the Spaniards of Cuba grve the 

 name of siguatera to the disorder in the system which follows the eating of 

 fishes reputed poisonous. Cuvier, however, in his description of the 

 Sjjfiyrosna barracuda, has extracted from the MS. papers of M. Plee, who 

 minutely examined into the history of the fishes of these seas, all that has 

 been distinctly ascertained on the subject of this adventitious quality of 

 that particular species of Sphyraena distinguished by naturalists as barra- 

 couta ; a quality, however, common to the S. becuna of Lacepede, and the 

 S. pecuda of Parra. We will quote M. Plee's statement : 



" Many persons are afraid to eat the barracouta, because there are fre- 

 quent proofs of its causing sickness and death. The venenose quality of it 

 is most certainly the result of a particular condition of the fish, occurring at 

 different seasons of the year. 



" I have consulted many persons with regard to the poison of the 

 becune ; all have assured me that there is an unfailingjmeans of being 

 certain whether it is or is not venenose, when fishing for it. For the 

 purpose of testing the one or other condition, it is only necessary to observe 

 in cutting it up whether there flows from it a kind of white water, or rather 

 a sort of sanie or matter, which in any case is a sure sign that the becune 

 is in a state of disease. Don Arthur O'Neill, the Marquis del Norte, has told 

 me that he had seen experiments with the flesh in this condition made 

 upon dogs, and that they all confirmed the exactness of the means of being 

 6ecure against injury. 



" The signs of being poisoned by the flesh of the becune," (the becune, 

 it must be remarked is our barracouta of the market ; the smaller of the 

 two species ; that properly known as barracouta being from six to nine feet 

 long, and slimmer in form,) are a general trembling, nausea, vomiting, 

 acute pains, particularly in the joints of the arms, and the hands. 



"Sometimes these symptoms succeed each other with such rapidity, 

 that it is difficult to fix with anything like precision the periods of the 



