282 ON POISONOUS FISHES AND FISH-POISONS. 



Father Labat who first started this notion ; but, as Oliver Goldsmith well 

 observes, " it only removes our wonder a little further back, for it may be 

 asked with as just a cause for curiosity, how comes the permanently 

 poisonous fish to procure its noxious qualities ?" (Animated Nature, book 

 iii., ch. ii., History of Fishes.) 



There is a harmless as well as a hurtful sprat. The noxious is distin- 

 guished from the harmless by the presence of a spot at the operculum. 

 The fish that may be safely eaten has the same spot, but golden yel- 

 low. Are they different species, or are they one and the same, only 

 indicating different conditions ? The question has never been answered. 

 Sir Robert Schomburgk submitted some specimens of sprat from Barbados 

 to the examination of the eminent naturalists Muller and Troschell, of 

 Berlin, and all we learn is that the species seemed new. One was named 

 Alosa Bishopi. " It agreed in some points with Alosa apicalis, known as 

 the red-eared pilchard : it had, however, a black spot behind the operculum., 

 not to be observed in the Alosa apicalis." Its length was that of our market 

 sprat, four and a half inches. He adds that the "sprats are much 

 esteemed in the West Indian Islands, but that a species called the yellow- 

 tailed sprat proves unfortunately poisonous at certain periods of the year 

 among the Leeward and Virgin Islands." (Hist, of Barbados, ch. iv., 

 p. 675-6.) 



Goldsmith, speaking on Dr Grainger's authority, — the author of the 

 poem the ' Sugar Cane ' — " his poor worthy friend," as lie calls him, — 

 " mentioned that of the fish causrht at one end of the island of St Christo- 



O 



pher, some were the best and most wholesome in the world, while others 

 taken at a different end were always dangerous and most uncommonly 

 fatal." He was speaking of fish in general, and of sprats in particular. 

 Our own experience of sprats is very similar. The sprats taken on the 

 south side of Jamaica are only occasionally to be suspected, but those on 

 the north side always. How far the distinctive black and yellow spot prevails 

 at those times and in those places, I have not learnt ; but in the Kingston 

 market they consider the distinction not specific, but adventitious in one 

 and in the same species, — so that our wonder at this quality goes even still 

 further back than Goldsmith thought it did in his time, if the poison of 

 the other fishes depended on their feeding on sprats. 



Among the fishes enumerated as poisonous in the division Malacopterygii, 

 are the Balistes and Ostraciones, both genera of the family Sclerodermi. We 

 have some eight different Ostraciones, all known by the name of Trunk-fishes, 

 and some four or five Balistes, receiving ordinarily the apiaellation of Old 

 wives. Though differing much from each other in external appearance, 

 there is much similarity in then- internal organisation. 



The Balistes, beside having an air-bladder near the back, are provided 

 with a ventral cavity into which they can introduce, when they will, air to 

 lighten themselves in swininiing, — for they move through the water with 

 toil and difficulty. They are not, like the Trunk-fishes, boxed in around 

 and about the body ; yet in the place of scales they are covered over with 



