Chap. 17.] 
FISHES. 
383 
attilus^^ of the Padus, which, naturally of an inactive nature, 
sometimes grows so fat as to weigh a thousand pounds, and 
when taken with a hook, attached to a chain, requires a yoke 
of oxen to draw it^^ on land. An extremely small fish, which 
is known as the clupea,^^ attaches itself, with a wonderful 
tenacity, to a certain vein in the throat of the attilus, and de- 
stroys it by its bite. The silurus carries devastation with it 
wherever it goes, attacks every living creature, and often drags 
beneath the water horses as they swim. It is also remark- 
this name, which is only found here and once in Hesychius, who calls it 
Ki]TU)Srig, " of the large kind." Rondelet, in his account of river fish, 
suggests that ^' exos " is the proper reading, and that under this name is 
meant a species of sturgeon. Gesner asks if it might not possibly have 
been the '^brochet;" but, as Cuvier says, that fish was well-known to 
the Romans under the name of lucius " [our pike], and it is not suffi- 
ciently large for Pliny to compare it to the wels or the attilus, and for 
Hesychius to have enumerated it among the " large fishes. It is in 
accordance, however, with this suggestion of Gesner that the pike genus 
bears the name of "esox" in modern Natural History. 
Cuvier says that there are found in the river Padus, or Po, several 
species of very large sturgeons, and that there is one of these which still 
bears the name, according to Salvian and Rondelet, of adello and adilo. 
Aldrovandus, he says, calls it adelo or ladano. This Cuvier takes to be the 
attilus of Pliny. Eut, according to Eezzonico, Paulus Jovius denies that 
the attilus or adelus of the people of Ferrara is of the sturgeon genus ; 
but says that it is so much larger than the sturgeon, and so different in 
shape, flavour, value, and natural habits, that the names of these two 
fishes were used proverbially by the people, when they were desirous to 
signify two objects of totally different nature. Eezzonico remarks, that 
the name given to it in Ferrara was properly " I'adano," which became 
corrupted into "ladano," and expresses it as his opinion that it was the 
same with the esox of the Rhine. He also states, that, from the exceeding 
whiteness of the flesh, the ladano was called by the fishermen, sturione 
bianco. 
2^ Rezzonico says that this may possibly have happened in Pliny's day, 
but that in modern times no attilus or ladano is found weighing more 
than 500 pounds. He says that this fish may, in comparison with the 
sturgeon, be aptly called an inert fish ; for while the sturgeon makes the 
greatest possible resistance to the fishermen, the other is taken with the 
greatest ease. 
26 Cuvier says, that this was probably the Petromyzon branchialis of 
Linnaeus, the lampillon, a little fish resembling a worm, which adheres to 
the gills of other fish, and sucks the blood. The same name was also 
given to the Clupea alosa of Linnaeus, our " shad indeed Linnaeus gave 
this name to the whole herring and pilchard genus, erroneously classing 
them with the shad. 
