PLATE XCVI. 
ttie most beautiful of European fishes. It may be collected from the 
''^’orks of Elian, Aristotle, Salvian, Aldrovandus, and others, that tl^is 
fish is common at certain seasons in tlie Mediterranean. Elian speaks 
,®fit, however, as a poisonish fish, and of such a veneinous nature, 
that it would he unsafe to eat it, or even the flesh of any other fish 
that had been touched by it. Galen mentions it, on the contrary, 
as wholesome food. The male of this species is distinguished ac- 
cording to some writers, by having the back of a black colour instead 
of green, as in the female ; but it appears in this, and various other 
r espects, to be an extremely variable species. Neither are its habits and 
manners coiTCctly known ; ifis generally asserted, that it swims in 
Small shoals ; Aristotle speaks to this effect, but this is contradicted 
by Salvian and others, who describe it as a more solitary fish. It 
must be. Indeed, confessed, that the history of the Labrus Julis alto- 
gether, as related by the different writers above-mentioned, is ob- 
scure and contradictory, and that little reliance can be placed in tlreir 
observations till we become better convinced of their accuracy, through 
the medium of modern ichthyologists. 
