ONCE MORE THE SUCKING-FISH 



t^ROFESSOR LEO WIENER 

 Har\ ard University 



In 1919, while Professor E. W. Gudger's excellent 

 series of articles "On the Use of the Sucking-fish for 

 Catching Fish and Turtles" appeared in The American 

 Natuealist, I was at work on my first volume of "Africa 

 and the Discovery of America," where I had to touch on 

 the remora story in the early voyages to America, in 

 order to show that they were all a myth, based on the lit- 

 erary influence of Odoric of Pordenone on Columbus. 

 As my sources were naturally of a different character 

 from those of Professor Gudger, who was chiefly inter- 

 ested in the zoological side of the question, I was able 

 to supplement his thorough discussion with a number of 

 new data, which the zoologist will not consider to be 

 amiss. 



The remora was dimly kno\Mi to all the Arabic voy- 

 agers. We meet with it in the middle of the ninth cen- 

 tury, in the very beginning of the "Chain of Chron- 

 icles."^ 



In the Indian Ocean tliere is a fisli, twenty cubits in lengtli, in whose 

 belly there is a fish of the same kin..!, in whose belly there is similarly 

 a third fish. All these fislies are alive and niovinsr. This larcre fish is 

 called al-u:dl. In spite of its size it has for its enemy a lish only a 

 cubit in length, called^ el-h^sh^L When the lari:e fish becomes an<rry 



not let go of him until ho is >lvi\d. The lilih^ lish also aita.'lies itself 

 to boats, and the lar<re tish dan'^ not ai>]n-oacli it. heeanso of tiie fear 



dans rinde et'a la Chine dans le IX* siftcle de I'&re chr^tienne," Paris, 

 1845, Vol. I, p. 2 f. 



165 



