390 
pli]sy's natural history. 
Book IX. 
tlie reason why they are to be seen descending into the Euxine 
Sea, but never in the act of returning from it. The time for 
taking tunnies is, from the rising of the Vergilise^^ to the setting 
of Arc turns throughout the rest of the winter season, they 
lie concealed at the bottom of deep creeks, unless they are in- 
duced to come out by the warmth of the weather or the full 
moon. These fish fatten to suc'h an extraordinary degree as 
to burst. The longest period of their life^^ is two years. 
CHAP. 21. — WHY EISHES LEAP ABOVE THE SUEEACE OP THE WATER. 
There is a little animal, in appearance like a scorpion, and 
of the size of a spider.^^ This creature, by means of its sting, 
attaches itself below the fin to the tunny and the fish known 
as the sword-fish"^*^ and ^ which often exceeds the dolphin in 
magnitude, and causes it such excruciating pain, that it will 
often leap on board of a ship even. Fish will also do the same 
at other times, when in dread of the violence of other fish, and 
mullets more especially, which are of such extraordinary swift- 
ness, that they will sometimes leap over a ship, if lying cross- 
wise. 
descent of the Argonauts from the Ister into the Adriatic, that such a 
passage by water was totally impossible ; hence, as Hardouin says, he is 
obliged here to have recourse to subterraneous passages. 
The Pleiades. See B. ii. c. 47. The rising of the Pleiades was con- 
sidered the beginning of summer, being the forty-eighth day after the 
vernal equinox. See also B. xviii. c. 59. 
The evening setting, namely. This took place on the fourth day before 
the nones of November. See E. xviii. c. 74. 
^6 Aristotle, Hist. Anim, B. vi. c. 16. 
^'^ Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 16. Hardouin remarks, that the 
tunny which Pliny mentions in c. 17, as weighing so many hundreds of 
pounds, must certainly have been older than this. 
This is, as Cuvier has remarked, a crustaceous insect of the parasitical 
olass Lernsea, which are monoculous [and form the modern class of the 
Epizoa]. Gmelin, he says, has called it " Pennatula filosa," though, in fact, 
it is not a pennatula [or polyp] at all. As Dalechamps observes, its ap- 
pearance is very different from that of a scorpion. Penetrating the flesh 
of the tunny or sword-fish, it almost drives the creature to a state of 
madness. 
^9 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 19. Appian also, in his Halieutics, B. ii., 
makes mention of this animal. Pintianus remarks, that Athenseus, on read- 
ing this passage of Aristotle, read it not as " arachnes," but " drachmes 
not the size of a spider, but the weight of a " drachma," or Eoman denarius. 
'0 Or the emperor fish, Cuvier says, the Xiphias gladius of Linneeus. 
