STONE BASS. 
201 
souglit shelter among the suspended bernacles or ■weeds, which 
float in masses in connection with the wood. That they do 
not themsel'vres feed on the bernacles is plain, for I have never 
found them in the stomach; but what cause should lead them 
to come to us under such circumstances, or as is reported to 
have happened in some rare instances, where the bottom of a 
g}xip has been foul from the same cause, appears diflicult to 
he explained; as is also the fact that so large a number 
should be thus attracted, when they are reported in the 
Mediterranean to be of solitary habits. 
So familiar is the opinion that such a mass of floating wreck 
in the northern part of the Atlantic is usually accompanied 
with a multitude of these fishes, that I am informed, when 
it floats within sight of a ship and the weather is favourable, 
a boat is often sent -with the expectation to obtain some of 
them, which is done by piercing them with a spear usually 
employed by sailors for such an object, under the name of 
grayns. So many as thirty-five have been secured at one 
time by a single boat on our own coast. It is agreed on all 
hands that they form an excellent dish at table. 
Of a considerable number of these fishes which have come 
under my observation I have never met with more than one 
example that has exceeded, or even reached the weight of twenty 
pounds. But on the evidence of Cuvier we gather that in 
the Mediterranean they sometimes so vastly exceed this, as to 
be met with of a hundredweight; and it is from this circum- 
stance chiefly that I am led to believe it likely to be a fish 
long lost to science, but kno'wn to the ancients, and men- 
tioned by Oppiaii under the name of Etnaian cantharus, 
an epithet which Scaliger pronounces to have been applied to 
the fish on account of its great size. Tlie particulars leading 
to this supposition are but few, and perhaps obscure, but they 
agree with the characters of the fish as known in its native 
haunts; and although Ovid designates it as 
“Cantliarus ingratus succo,” 
“The Cantharus of unpleasant flavour, 
this may have depended on the mode of cookery, or the 
taste of the eater; and that it was fished for as a valuable 
VOL. I. * ® 
