464 
pli^tt's natueal histoet. 
Book IX. 
the animal discharges an impregnating liquid, which has the 
appearance of milk. Eels, again, rub themselves against rocks, 
upon which, the particles^^ which they thus scrape from off their 
bodies come to life, such being their only means of reproduction. 
The various kinds of fishes do not couple oilt of their own kind, 
with the exception of the squatina and the ray.^^ The fish 
that is produced from the union of these two, resembles a ray 
in the fore part, and bears a name among the Greeks com- 
pounded of the two.^^ 
Certain animals are produced only at certain seasons of the 
year, both in water and on the land, such, for instance, as scal- 
lops, snails, and leeches, in the spring, which also disappear at 
stated periods. Among fishes, the wolf-fish^* and the trichias^ 
bring forth twice in the year, as also do all kinds of rock-fish ; 
the mullet and the chalcis^^ thrice in the year, the cyprinus^^ 
six times, the scorpsena^^ twice, and the sargus in spring and 
autumn. Among the flat-fish, the squatina brings forth twice 
Cuvier says, that at the time of the oyster spawning, its body appears 
swollen in some parts with a milky fluid, which is not improbably the fe- 
cundating fluid. During this season the oyster is generally looked upon as 
unfit for food ; among us, from the beginning of May to the end of July. 
9^ This, Cuvier remarks, is a mere vague hypothesis, as to the repro- 
duction of the eel, without the slightest foundation. Pliny borrows it 
from Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B, vi. c. 9. 
92 The squatina and the ray do not interbreed, Cuvier observes, any 
more than other fish ; and the Squatina raia, or rhinobatis, (which was 
said to be their joint production), is a particular species, more flat in form 
than the squalus, and longer than the ray. 
93 'Pivo^aTOQy " the squatinoraia." 
^ " Lupus." The Perca labrax of Linnaeus ; see c. 28 of the present 
Book. 
The sardine. See c. 20 of the present Book. 
96 See c. 71 of the present Book. 
97 This name, Cuvier says, appears so rarely in the ancient writers, that 
it is difficult to ascertain its exact signification. The moderns, he says, 
have pretty generally agreed to give it to the carp, but without any good 
and sufficient foundation. It was a lake or river fish, which, as Aristotle 
says, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 14, deposited its eggs five or six times in the 
year, and which had a palate so flesliy, that it might almost be mistaken 
for a tongue, B. iv. c. 8, characteristics that appear well suited to the carp. 
But then, on the other hand, Oppian mentions it, Halieut. B. i., as a shore 
fish, implying apparently that it belonged to the sea ; and Pliny himself, 
in c. 25 of the present Book, does the same, by his words, " hoc et in mari 
accidere cyprino." The words " in mari," however, he has added, of his 
own accord, to the account which he has derived from Aristotle. 
88 The fish called the sea-scorpion. Aiistotle, Hist. Anim. B. v. c. 11. 
