372 
plint's natukal histoey. 
[Book IX. 
and more especially by the notes of the water-organ.^^ He 
does not dread man, as though a stranger to him, but comes to 
meet ships, leaps and bounds to and fro, vies with them in 
swiftness, and passes them even when in full sail. 
In the reign of the late Emperor Augustus, a dolphin 
which had been carried to the Lucrine Lake conceived a 
most wonderful affection for the child of a certain poor man, 
who was in the habit of going that way from Eaise to Pu- 
teoli^^ to school, and who used to stop there in the middle of 
the day, call him by his name of Simo, and would often entice 
him to the banks of the lake with pieces of bread which he 
carried for the purpose. I should really have felt ashamed to 
mention this, had not the incident been stated in writing in 
the works of Maecenas, Pabianus, Flavins Alfius, and many 
others. At whatever hour of the day he might happen to be 
called by the boy, and although hidden and out of sight at the 
bottom of the water, he would instantly fly to the surface, 
and after feeding from his hand, would present his back for 
him to mount, taking care to conceal the spiny projection of 
his fins'^^ in their sheath, as it were ; and so, sportively taking 
him up on his back, he would carry him over a wide expanse 
music combined, similar to the performance of Arion, mentioned at the end 
of the Chapter. 
^6 The organ was so called by the ancients, from the resemblance borne 
by its pipes to " hydraula,*' or water-pipes, and from the fact of the 
bellows being acted on by the pressure of water. According to an author 
quoted by Athenaeus, B. iv. c. 75, the first organist was Ctesibius of Alex- 
andria, who lived about B.C. 200. It is not improbable that Pliny refers 
to this invention in B. vii. c. 38. The pipes of the organ of Ctesibius were 
partly of bronze and partly of reed, and TertuUian describes it as a very 
complicated instrument, 
^' .^lian, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 15, tells this story as well, and Aulus 
Gellius, B. vii. c. 8, relates it from the fifth Book of the JEgyptiaca of Apion, 
who stated that he himself had witnessed the fact. 
68 The Lucrine Lake originally communicated with the sea, but was af- 
terwards separated from the Bay of Cumse by a dyke eight stadia in length. 
In the time of Augustus, however, Agrippa opened a communication between 
the Lake and the Bay, for the purpose of forming the Julian harbour. If 
the circumstance here mentioned by Pliny happened before this period, 
" invectus must mean carried by human agency but if after, it is pos- 
sible that the fish may have been canied into the lake by the tide. For 
an account of the lake, see B.. iii. c. 9. 
«9 See B. iii. c. 9. 
" Pinnarum aculeas." See the remarks of Cuvier on this passage, 
and his conclusion as to the fish meant, in his Note in p. 369. 
