394 
pliny's KATUEAL HISTOEY. [Book IX. 
many fish are taken in a state of blindness.^^ Hence it is, that 
during these months they lie concealed in holes, in the same 
manner as land animals, as we have already mentioned; 
and more especially the hippurus,^^ and the coracinus,^^ which 
Archestratus looks upon its head as a delicacy, but thinks so little of the 
other parts, that they are not, in his opinion, worth carrying away. He was, 
however, well known to he much too refined in his notions of epicurism. 
^5 Hardouin ?ays that Aristotle, B. viii. c. 20, from whom this account 
is taken, does not say this of all kinds of fish, but only of those which have 
large heads. 
^6 In B. viii. c. 54 and 55, where he is speaking of bears and other 
animals. 
Cuvier states that Pliny takes this name from Aristotle, and that 
Athenseus, B. vii., says that it is synonymous with the Greek name, Kopv- 
(paivYi. He also informs us, that modern naturalists have applied these 
two names to the dorade of navigators, the lampuga of the Spaniards and 
Sicilians, the Coryphaena hippurus of Linnaeus, but that it is not clear that 
it has been applied on sufficient grounds : as there is no trace whatever of 
either of the two ancient names on the coasts of the Mediterranean, and the 
ancient writers have given no sufficient characteristics of the coryphaena or 
hippurus. It was, we learn, of excellent flavour, and in the habit of 
springing out of the water, from which, Athenseus says, it received the 
name of " arneutes," from apvog^ " a lamb.'' 
Cuvier remarks, that Rondelet and others of the moderns have 
thought that this was synonymous with the crow-fish, the corb of the 
French, the Scisena nigra of Linnseus, but that his own researches on the 
subject had led him to a different conclusion. Its name was derived, he 
says, from the Greek fcopal, *' a crow," on account of the blackness of its 
colour, as Oppian says, Halieut. B. i. 1. 133 ; but there were white ones as 
well, which Athenaeus, B. viii., says, were the best eating, though the 
black ones were the most common. Aristophanes, as quoted by Athenaeus, 
B. viii., caUs it also the fish with black gills, iitkavoTTTipvyov. Aris- 
totle, Hist. Anim. B. v. c. 10, says that it was a small fish, and one of 
those that increase rapidly in growth. It was little esteemed, and was 
much used, as we learn from Athenaeus and the Geoponica, for salting, and 
making garum or fish -sauce. It was also used as a bait for the antliias or 
flower-fish. Strabo, B. xiii., also speaks of a river-fish of this name, as 
being found in the Nile ; the flesh of which Athenseus mentions as being 
remarkably good eating, and the best among the fishes of the Mle. Mar- 
tial also, B. xiii. Ep. 85, calls it "princeps Niliaci macelli," the "prince 
of the produce of the Nile." That fish, however, Pliny says, B. xxxii. c. 
5, was peculiar to the Nile ; and he states, B. v. c. 9, that in consequence 
of finding it in a lake of Lower Mauritania, Juba pretended that the Nile 
took its rise in that lake. Athenaeus says, B. iii., that the dwellers on the 
Nile called it ttsXt?;, " the buckler and in B, vii., that the people of Alex- 
andria called it irXdra^, from its broad shape. Now, Cuvier remarks, it 
is well known that the best fish of the Nile at the present day is the bolty, 
the Labrus Niloticus of Linnaeus, and the Chromis Nilotica of his own sys- 
tem , and this he takes to be the Coracinus albus. It is flat and compressed, 
