90 THE MURiENA. 



In rocky nooks, besides the beautiful Wrasses 

 already mentioned, numbers of Blennies and 

 Gobies abound ; some of them brilliantly coloured. 

 The e^cvnic of the Greeks, described by Aristotle 

 as a little rock fish, with fins which might be 

 mistaken for feet, used in philters, was probably 

 a goby or a blenny, and not regarded as anything 

 very wonderful, until such pseudo-naturalists as 

 Pliny, and Ovid, and Oppian, made up for their 

 ignorance of the creature by inventing strange 

 fables about its power of arresting vessels. The 

 curious sucking-fish now called Echeneis (the 

 Remora), does not appear to have been known to 

 the ancients. The fish which we found to live 

 deepest of any in the iEgean was a little goby, 

 frequently taken in the dredge at a depth of 

 forty and fifty fathoms. Under great masses 

 of rock close to shore, lives the Muraena, the 

 sea-eel, so famous among ancient epicures. Its 

 long slimy body is beautifully clouded with pur- 

 plish-brown and salmon colour. The modern 

 Greeks call it Gfivpaiva, and esteem it highly. 

 It is cooked by them without having been 

 skinned, and is excellent eating, though not 

 equal to the famous fresh-water eels of the 

 Thames, that essential element at white-bait 



