308 
BRITISH ENTOMOSTRACA. 
the assertion almost in the words of Aristotle.* * * § Oppianus, 
in his poem ‘ Alieuticon,’ describes the sufferings of the 
poor tunny and sword-fish in moving language, and 
asserts that the fish are frequently killed by their pigmy 
assailants. f Athenseus repeats what his predecessors have 
written before him ; and Salvianus, in his ‘ Aquatilium 
Animalium Historia,’ 1554, quotes at length the passages 
bearing upon the subject from Aristotle, Pliny, Oppianus, 
and Athenseus.j: Rondeletius, in his ‘Libri de Piscibus 
marinis/ 1554, repeats, for the sixth time, Aristotle’s and 
Pliny’s accounts of this parasite of the tunny and sword- 
fish, and to prove his personal knowledge of the little 
animal in question, gives a figure of a tunny, with the 
parasite attached, near the pectoral fin.§ He says it ad- 
heres so tenaciously, that it cannot be shook off by any 
agitation of the body of its host. 
Conrad Gesner, in his ‘ Historia Animalium — De Aqua- 
tilibus,’ 1558, enters largely into the history of this para- 
site. He describes its structure and appearance, “be- 
cause,” he says, “ few people know what this parasite- is, as 
it is very small, seldom to be seen, except at the time of 
the rising of the dog-star, and then not on many fishes, 
but only on the tunny, sword-fish, and occasionally the 
* “Animal est parvum, scorpionis effigie, aranei magnitudine. Hoc se, 
et thynno, et ei qui gladius vocatur, crebro delphini magnitudine excedenti, 
sub pinna affigit aculeo, tantique infestat dolore, ut in naves ssepenumero 
exiliant. Quod et alias faciunt aliorum vim timentes, mugiles maxime, tarn 
prsecipuse velocitatis, ut transversa navigia interim superjactent.” — Hist. 
Nat., lib. ix, cap. 16. 
f “ Dum canis ardenti turbatur sydere cadum 
Et thynni et gladii diro vexantur asilo : 
Qui fixus madidis illos contundit in alis. 
Non arcere queunt, non banc propellere pestem, 
Incutit hoc celeres vires, stimulosque feroces 
Concitat ; armantur rabie, furuentque dolore : 
Invitosque agitat pestis furibunda natantes : 
Exhorret vulnus, bacchantur in aequore lata. 
Hi torti stimulis incursant navibus altis : 
Et ssepe in terram saliunt e gurgite vasto. 
In tanto volvunt luctantu membra dolore, 
Et vitam in tanto mutant cum morte furore.” 
Alieuticon, traduct. Laurent. Lippio, liber xi, p. 24. 
§ P. 249. 
\ Pp. 126-8. 
