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SUCKING FISHES. 
( Discobuli of GotiAN.) 
This small family of fishes is distinguished hy the remarlcahle 
character of possessing an organized disk below the throat, 
where it is encircled with a narrow border of fin, which forms 
an union also with the pectoral fins. The office of this disk 
is to enable the fish to fasten itself to any fixed object, in a 
manner which bears some degree of likeness to that by which 
the Remora attaches itself to the body of some larger species; 
and the difference in this respect in the last-named family 
chiefly lies in the position of the organ, which, as we have 
seen, is on the top of the head. 
This family of sucking fishes does not appear to have been 
known to the ancients, but we learn from Griffith’s translation 
of Cuvier’s “Animal Kingdom,” that a Greek writer of the 
seventh century, A.D., has mentioned them, although, judging 
by their habit of adhering to other substances, he regarded 
them as belonging to the same class as the Remora. He terms 
the fish mentioned by him Naucrates, which is the name applied 
by others to the true Remora; but he says the organ was on 
the middle of the breast, and that it resembled the musical 
instrument, a cymbal. These fishes were little known also to 
naturalists of the middle ages, whose notice of the larger 
species, our Common Lumpfish, appears to have been limited 
to the circumstances of its curious shape being turned into 
distortion, for the purpose of its being displayed to the 
wondering crowd, among a variety of other “ill-shaped fishes.” 
Jonston gives us a figure of this species of the natural 
form, as well as of that which had been thus distorted; but 
our earliest knowledge of the peculiarity of this best known 
of the class is owing to Willughby, who has engraved a 
competent likeness of the Large Lumpfish, and who also men- 
