392 
plint's natueal htstoet. 
Book IX. 
be full of eggs. I^early all kinds of fish that are covered with 
scales are gregarious. They are most easily taken before sun - 
rise for then more particularly their powers of seeling are 
defective. They sleep during the night ; and when the weather 
is clear, are able to see just as well then as during the 
day. It is said, also, that it greatly tends to promote their 
capture to drag the bottom of the water, and that by so doing- 
more are taken at the second haul "^^ than at the first. They 
are especially fond of the taste of oil, and find nutriment in 
gentle showers of rain. Indeed, the very reeds, even, although 
they are produced in swamps, will not grow to maturity with- 
out the aid of rain : in addition to this, we find that wherever 
fishes remain constantly in the same water, if it is not renewed 
they will die. 
CHAP. 24. PISHES WHICH HAVE A STONE IN THE HEAD ; THOSE 
WHICH KEEP THEMSELVES CONCEALED DTJEING WINTER; AND 
THOSE WHICH AEE NOT TAKEN IN WINTEE, EXCEPT UPON STATED 
DAYS. 
All fish have a presentiment of a rigorous winter, but more 
especially those which are supposed to have a stone in the 
head, the lupus,^^ for instance, the chromis,^^ the scia3- 
colour, variegated with black rays, which answers very well to the Perca 
scriba of Linnseus, approaching most nearly to the Perca cabrilla. 
Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 75. 
'^^ Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 7. 
Aristotle makes the same remark, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 25. 
^0 Cuvier observes, that all fishes are found to have in the membranous 
labyrinth of the ear, bodies like stone, enclosed in a certain kind of gela- 
tinous liquor. These bodies, however, he says, are not equally large in 
all kinds of fish. He says that it is found largest in the sciaena. 
SI The Perca lab rax of Linnseus. Called "loup," or ''wolf," on 
the Mediterranean coasts of France, and '' bar " on the shores of the 
ocean. 
82 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 19, attributes to the chromis, Cu- 
vier says, stones in the head, B. iv. c. 8, an acute hearing, B. iv. c. 9, the 
power of making a sort of grunting noise, and the habit of living gregari- 
ously, and depositing the eggs once a year, B. iv. c. 9 ; all which character- 
istics, he says, are found in the Scisena umbra of the naturalists, the maigre 
of the French. In addition to this, Epicharmus, as quoted by Athenaeus, 
B. vii., says that the chromis and the xiphias are, at the beginning of 
spring, the very best of fish ; a quality which must be admitted to belong 
to the maigre, for its size and its excellent flavour. However, he says, 
seeing that the glaucus, which Aristotle has distinguished from the 
