THRASHER. 
t59 
coasts of Britain in the summer, and is sometimes caught en- 
tangled in drift nets. I have been informed of two of them 
taken in this manner at one time, and from the circumstances 
attending the capture of these and others, we may conclude 
that the force they exert in the water is very great; as indeed 
we might also conclude from the length and flexibility of their 
tail. They had carried the whole body of the net before them, 
until it had been thrown back over the head ropes; by which 
means they had fallen into a bag, from which they had not 
been able to extricate themselves. 
It is one of the fishes that has been reported to receive its 
young ones into its stomach as a place of shelter; and Eon- 
deletius informs us that he saw them cut out from a Thrasher 
that had been taken. The fishermen supposed that they had 
been swallowed through hunger ; but from their being alive and 
uninjured, he felt no doubt that his own conclusion was the 
true one. 
I found young herrings in the stomach of one I examined. 
From an intimation of .$lian, it appears probable that the 
Greek fishermen were in the habit of seeking after it for food, 
(Var. Hist., B. 1,) and for this purpose Eisso pronounces it 
very good. 
It is worthy of notice in this place that the author who first 
described this fish, was the well-known Dr. Joannes Caius, 
(John Keys,) who wrote a work, “De Canibus Britannlcis,” at 
the end of which, ‘de rariorum animalium historia,’ he gives 
an account of an example that had been taken in a net in th( 
year 1569. Its length from the snout to the tail was scvei 
(Eoman) feet, and of the tail seven feet and a half. He calls i 
Cercus, and derives the name from the Greek Karkos, becaus' 
of its tail: — a curious etymology for an English word. Th 
flesh he compares to that of a Salmon, but confesses that i 
was not quite as agreeable to the palate as the flesh of that fi-l 
The extreme length of an example was in a straight lii. 
ten feet ten inches and a half, and along the curve elevei 
feet eight inches; three feet four inches and a half round where 
thickest; conical from the snout to the pectoral fins, and thick 
even to the tail, which from the root is five feet and a half 
long, and consequently more than half the length of the body. 
Eye prominent, round, hard, and four inches from the snout; 
