Cbap. 72.] 
VENOMOUS SEA- ANIMALS. 
459 
tion which has not its like in the sea no, not even those insects 
which frequent our public-houses^^ in summer, and are so trouble- 
some with their nimble leaps, nor yet those which more es- 
pecially make the human hair their place of refuge ; for these 
are often drawn up in a mass collected around the bait. This, 
too, is supposed to be the reason why the sleep of fish is some- 
times so troubled in the night. Upon some fish, indeed, these 
animals breed as parasites : among these, we find the fish 
known as the chalcis.^^ 
CHAP. 72. (48.) VENOMOUS SEA- ANIMALS. 
E'er yet are dire and venomous substances found wanting in the 
sea : such, for instance, as the sea-hare ^"^ of the Indian seas, 
62 Adeoqiie nihil non gignitur in mari." 
63 " Cauponamm." " Caupona" had two significations ; that of an inn 
where travellers obtained food and lodging, and that of a shop where wine 
and ready-dressed meat were sold. A lower kind of inn was the popina, 
which, was principally frequented by the slaves and lower classes, and was 
mostly used as a brothel as well. 
64 He alludes to various kinds of sea-animals, called sea-lice and sea- 
fleas. Cuvier says, that there are some Crustacea which, have been called 
sea-fleas and sea-lice, some of which kinds are parasites, and are attached 
to various fishes and cetacea. Thus, he says, a pycnogonum is commonly 
named " pediculus balsena?," or the ''whale-louse;" one of the calygse is 
called the " fish-flea," another the *' mackerel- flea." The name of sea-flea, 
he observes, has been given more especially to a very diminutive kind of 
shrimp, in consequence of its power of leaping from place to place. 
6^ Aristotle says, that the chalcis is greatly tormented by sea-fleas,, which 
attach themselves to its gills. Cuvier remarks, that a great number of 
fish are subject to have the gills attacked by parasitical animals of the 
genus Lernaea or that of the monoculi of Linnaeus, which have been divided 
into many classes since. They have nothing in common, he says, with the 
land-flea, except the name and the property of living at the expense of 
other animals. 
66 The ancients, Cuvier says, speak of their chalcis as being of a similar 
nature to the thryssa and the sardine (Athenseus, B. vii.), gregarious fishes, 
which live both in the sea and in fresh water, and the flesh of which was 
salted. Hence he concludes that it was the same as the Clupea ficta of 
^Lacepede, the "finte" of the French, and the agone of Lombardy, 
which unites all these characteristics, and is sometimes called the " sar- 
dine" of the Lago di Garda. 
It is mentioned again in B. xxiii. c. 3. Cuvier says, that the sea- 
hare of the ancients is the mollusc to which Linnaeus has injudiciously 
given the name of aplysia, which Pliny gives to certain of the sponge 
genus, and to which nomenclature of Linnaeus the modem naturahsts have 
assented, (See N. 51, p. 456.) Its tentacles and its muzzle, he says, resemble 
