ECHENEIDE.E. 265 



ECHENEIDE.E. 



The members of this family, which contains only one genus, may be at once recog- 

 nised by a flat disk on the top of the head with which they attach themselves to 

 sharks, ships' bottoms, &c. : it is composed of transverse moveable cartilaginous 

 plates, toothed or spinous on their posterior edges, and divided into two series by a 

 mesial longitudinal line. The echeneidece have an elongated body clothed with 

 small scales ; a single, soft dorsal opposite the anal ; the head altogether flat above; 

 the eyes lateral ; the mouth horizontal and rounded ; the lower jaw projecting 

 beyond the upper one, and armed, like the intermaxillaries, with small teeth in 

 card-like plates ; a very uniform row of slender teeth, resembling eye-lashes, on the 

 edge of the labials, which form the border of the upper jaw ; the vomer furnished 

 anteriorly with a cardiform stripe of teeth, and its whole dilated surface as well as 

 the tongue rough. They have eight gill-rays, the stomach forms a wide, blind sac, 

 the caeca are six or eight, the gut is wide and short, and they Avant the air-bladder. 

 The echeneidece are very disagreeable-looking fish, the flatness of the top of the 

 head giving them the appearance of swimming belly upwards : they fasten them- 

 selves upon the shark apparently for the purpose of being conveyed at ease through 

 the ocean, and of being ready to consume any small fragments that drop from the 

 monster's jaws when he takes his prey. Great numbers attach themselves to ships' 

 bottoms in the tropical seas, particularly on the coast of Africa, and when the cook 

 throws the washings of his coppers overboard, they dart off to feed upon the grease 

 and boiled pease with which the water is soiled, returning again in a short time to 

 the ship, swimming with a wriggling motion like an eel, and with considerable 

 velocity, so as to overtake with ease a vessel going before a brisk gale. They are 

 wary in taking a bait, but may be occasionally allured by a pellet of fat, or a little 

 piece of greasy dough, covering a very small hook. The echeneidece inhabit both 

 the Atlantic and Pacific, being numerous only within the tropics ; their northern 

 limit, in the former sea, appears to be about the 48th parallel. A well-known 

 Mediterranean species, which exists also in the ocean, was fabled by the ancients 

 to possess the power of arresting a ship in its course, whence its name of s^sviqig, 

 and echeneis among the Greek and Roman authors, and of remora by more modern 

 writers. The same species, and another of a larger size named naucrates, are 

 included by Drs. Mitchill and Smith in their respective lists of the fish of New 



2 m 



