72 ACANTHOPTERYGII. SPHYR^NADiE. 
the rather to rush towards its victims. Notwith- 
standing this anthropophagous appetite, however, 
it is eaten with relish, and is publicly sold in the 
fish-markets. A graver objection to it is that it 
is occasionally poisonous, which the colonists be- 
lieve is owing to its feeding on submerged ^^copper- 
banks,” or else to its having eaten the deadly fruit 
of the Manchioneel-tree. If incautiously tasted 
under such circumstances, it is said to produce 
sickness, vomiting, and intolerable pain in the 
head, accompanied with loss of the hair and nails ; 
and, in very bad cases, immediate death is the re- 
sult. As a criterion of its wholesomeness, the 
teeth and liver are examined ; if the former be 
white and the latter bitter, it is sound ; but if the 
teeth be green and the liver sweetish, it cannot be 
eaten with impunity. 
What has been reported,” observes M. Cu- 
vier, of the poisonous fishes of hot countries, and 
of that disease called siguatera^ which they occa- 
sion in certain circumstances, is so curious and 
interesting, that 1 am justified in inserting the 
information collected by M. Plee on the Barra- 
coota, which I have found in the papers of that 
unfortunate naturalist. Many persons, says he, 
fear to eat this fish because they have had frequent 
evidence of its causing disease, and sometimes 
death. This poisonous quality of the Barracoota 
belongs very certainly to a particular state of the 
individual, which appears to occur at different 
seasons of the year. 
I have consulted many persons with regard to 
the poison of the Barracoota; all have assured me 
that there is an infallible mode of determining 
whether it is, or is not, poisonous. For this end 
