396 
pliky's ]^ATIJEAL histokt. 
[Book IX. 
the rock-fish. It is said that, duricg the winter, the torpedo, 
the psetta,^^ and the sole, conceal themselves in the earth, or 
rather, I should say, in excavations made by them at the bot- 
tom of the sea. 
CHAP. 25. PISHES WHICH CONCEAL THEMSELVES I)TTE1:N^G THE 
SUMMER ; THOSE WHICH AEE INFLTJEKCED BY THE STAES. 
Other fishes, again, are unable to bear the heat of summer, 
and lie concealed during the sixty days of the hottest weather 
of midsummer ; such, for instance, as the glaucus,^^ the asellus,^ 
of the fish generally known by the ancients as the sea-perch ; and that 
there is reason for thinking that it was similar to the Perca scriba of Lin- 
naeus, having black lines running across the body. Most naturalists are 
of this opinion, he says, and the serran [our trumpet-fish] which bears 
this resemblance, is in many parts of Italy, at the present day, called the 
" Percia marina." 
93 The Eaia torpedo of Linnaeus. 
9^ Cuvier states, that Athenaeus, B. vii., says that the psetta was the same 
as the rhombus of the Eomans, the modern turbot, the Pleuronectes max- 
imus of Linnaeus. From a passage, however, of Aristotle, Hist. Anim. 
B. ix. c. 37, he feels convinced that it is the Pleuronectes rhombus of Lin- 
naeus, the barbue of the French, and with us the dab or sandling. Aris- 
totle says in that passage, that it is in the habit of concealing itself in the 
sand, while it moves to and fro the fiJaments around the mouth, and so 
attracts the little fish. These filaments, Cuvier says, are small radii of the 
anterior part of the dorsal fin, which form a sort of fringe around the mouth, 
whence its French name of barbue. The turbot has no such filaments. 
95 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 20. As Hardouin remarks, Aris- 
totle appears to assign the sixty days to the glaucils only. 
Naturalists have generally supposed, following Eondelet, Cuvier says, 
that the ancient glaucus was one of the class of centronotal fishes, the 
Scomber amia, or the Scomber glaucus of Linnseus ; but that the in- 
correctness of this notion is easily proved. Aristotle says, that in the glaucus 
the appendices to the pylorus are few in number, as in the dorado (the 
Sparus aurata of Linnaeus), while on the other hand the centronoti have 
them in almost greater number than any other kind of fish. Athenaeus 
says, B. iii., that the glaucus was a large fish, and Oppian, Hal. iii. 1. 193, 
speaks of it as taken with mullet. Aristotle, B. ii. c. 13, says, that it 
dwelt in deep water ; but, according to Oppian, Hal. i. 170, it sought its 
food among rocks and in the sand ; in addition to which characteristics, 
we find that it was a fish highly esteemed as a delicacy, the head being 
the part more especially preferred. From all these circumstances, Cuvier 
concludes that it was more probably a maigre, the Sciaena aquila of Cuvier, 
than one of the centronotal fishes. 
Literally, the *' little ass." Cuvier says, that nearly all the natural- 
ists, following Eondelet, apply this name to the merlus, the Gadus ruer- 
luccius of Linnaeus, or else the genus of the gadus, or cod, in general. It 
