I C H T H 
employed perfons to fiffi in all the lakes and rivers of this 
fettlement, and made agreements with thofe who went 
out to fea. I put a quantity of fifties newly taken, efpe- 
cially carps from the lakes, (of which we have here much 
more' beautiful fpecimens than in Europe,) into a large 
veffelof baked earth-; alas! in three days the whole was 
totted, and the trouble and expence loft. Then I had 
recourfe to glafs,..as tb&only refource for preferving fifh ; 
but glafs bottles are very rare in this country, and corks 
to flop them with ftill more difficult to procure; yet even 
then many were fpoiled for want of being foaked in frefti 
fpirit-or arrack three or four tinnjs. The fifties and in¬ 
fers I collected have caufed me to expend in" the fpace of 
a year more than a hundred bottles of fpirit and arrack ; 
a bottle of fpirit colts 3s. 6d. lterling, of arrack about iod. 
Putridity comes on here a vaft deal quicker than in Eu¬ 
rope; filhes cannot be preferved in fmall calks unlefs the 
fpirit is three or four times renewed, which occafions a 
valt expence; and freffi-water fiffi, as carp, &c, decay 
much fooner than fea-filh and infects. I then thought of 
the expedient of fplitting the fillies, and fpreading the 
halves upon pafteboard, with which I was fortunately pro¬ 
vided ; by this mode I had ‘made a confiderable collec¬ 
tion, which I intended to have lent you in O Sober; but, 
not finding at that time any IhiD failing for Europe, I was 
obliged to keep it during the rainy feafon ; and the whole 
was deftroyed by the worms! the like fate attended a col¬ 
lection of duffed beads intended for another natufalift. 
For you mull obferve, that the rainy feafon, which lafts 
from Ofiober till January, occafions a degree of dampnefs 
of which you can hardly have an idea in Europe ; the pil¬ 
lows and mattraffes of our beds were as if foaked in water. 
Still I did not defpair; I began afreffi ; I fummoned to¬ 
gether men who fiffi in lakes and rivers, and thofe who 
fiffi in the fea, (two lets of people, I mult obferve by the 
way, of entirely different natures, who never herd toge¬ 
ther; they never eat or drink together, they never inter¬ 
marry;) my own European pupils and the Malabar boys 
fet to work afreffi in clean ling and preparing fifties, which 
I then dried in an oven, and varniftied over with Kajaput 
oil. Herewith I fend you a quantity of them, ticketed 
and accompanied with remarks; with a quantity in bot¬ 
tles which I preferved of the before-mentioned colle&ion, 
for, as I know that your deferiptions include the internal 
conftruftion, I doubted not you would prefer complete 
fpecimens preferved in fpirits. I beg of you, fir, and of 
others who may have occafion for my fervices in this way, 
to confider, that in this place we are in abfolute want of 
all the materials for preferving fubjeits of natural hiftory, 
as knives and other initruments for diffiowelling; needles 
and pins for faftening infefts ; bottles, corks, and boxes ; 
paper requifite for drying and preferving of plants, &c. 
Every perfon, therefore, who fends me fuch commiffions, 
ffiould tranfmit thefe materials ; or years mull be loft; be¬ 
fore I can procure them from Europe.” 
More recently, La Cepede has publiftied an entirely 
new Natural Hiftory of Fifties. That ingenious writer 
has thrown much new light upon the fubjeft, and en¬ 
riched this department with many new fpecies brought 
into France by the celebrated travellers Commerfon, 
Dombey, Sec. 
Here perhaps it may not be amifs to mention the ufual 
mode of preferving fiffi for cabinets. Linnaeus’s method 
is, to expofethem to the air, and, when they acquire fuch 
a degree of putrefa&ion that the Ikin lofes its cohefion 
to the body of fiffi, it may be Hid off almoft like a glove ; 
the two fides of the lkin may then be dried upon paper 
like a plant, or one of the fides may be filled with platter 
of Paris, to give the fubjeCt a due plumpnefs. A filh may 
be prepared, after it has acquired this degree of putrefac¬ 
tion,- by making a longitudinal incifion on the belly, and 
carefully difl'eCting the fleffiy parts from the lkin, which 
are but flightly attached to it in confequence of the pu- 
trefcency. The lkin is then to be filled with cotton and 
OOLOGY, 73# 
the antifeptic powder tiled for preferving birds 5 and, laffly, 
to be fewed up where the incifion was made. 
Fecundity, beauty, and longevity, are three remarkable 
attributes of the finny race; and hence the Grecian my¬ 
thology, more reafbnable perhaps than we are' aware of, 
made the beautiful goddefs of love to rife from the bofom 
of the ocean, with fifties of the molt brilliant coloufs 
fporting about her. Let us not be furprifed at this alle¬ 
gory, which is as inftrnctive as it is pleafing. The Greeks 
had ltudied. fiffi more than they had other animals; they 
knew them better; for the table they preferred them to the 
choicelt fowl; and this predilection they tranfmitted not 
only to the modern Greeks, who long preferved it, but 
alfo to the Romans. 
A fiffi is defined, “ a red-blooded animal, which refpires 
in the water by means of gills.” Thefe feem to be the 
moft certain and" conftant c ha rafters; for the red blood 
diltinguiffies them from worms, and the gills inftead of 
lungs from all other animals; hence the cetaceous tribe, 
as the whale, dolphin, See. is excluded from this clafs. 
See the word Cete, vol. iv. But, though fifties are red- 
blooded animals, yet the red particles are not round, as in 
the mammalia clafs, but oval, as in the amphibia. The 
natural heat of fillies, Cepede obferves, is not above two 
or three degrees above the freezing point. They can en¬ 
dure almoft any degree of cold, provided it come on gra¬ 
dually ; they lie torpid under the ice in the polar feas; and 
revive when the vernal fun melts the ice, and opens their 
prifon ; but a violent degree of cold, fuch as that pro¬ 
duced by a mixture of ice with muriat of lime, kills any 
filli that is put fuddenly into it. 
Naturalilts obferve an exceeding great degree of wif- 
dom in the ftrufture of fifties, and in their conformation: 
to the element in which they are to live. Moft of them 
have the fame external form, ftiarp at either end, and 
fwelling in the middle, by which they are enabled to tra- 
verfe the fluid in which they refide with greater velocity 
and eafe. This ftiape is in fome meafure imitated by men, 
in thofe veflels which they defign to fail with the geeatefi: 
fwiftnefs; but the progrefs of the lvvifteft-failing fliip js 
far inferior to that of fifties. Any of the large fifties over¬ 
take a Ihip in full fail with the greaieft eafe, play round it 
as though it did not move at all, and can get before it at 
pleafure. 
In moft fifties, the aperture of the mouth is in the front 
of the head: but in fome, as the ftiark, Iturgeon, barbel,, 
&c. it is in the under part; in others, as the ralp-fiffi 
and fea-dragon, it is above. In fome fpecies, as the carp, 
the lips are moveable, and furniffied with bones peculiar 
to themfelves. What are called the lip-bones will be more 
particularly deferibed under the genus Labrus, or wrafle. 
The voracious fifties, as the trout and fmelt, have gene¬ 
rally the jaws, palate, and tongue, furnillied with teeth. 
The upper jaw of the fword-fifli projefts much beyond 
the lower; and both jaws in the orpiiis end in ffiarp 
points; in-Tome, as the filurus and gudgeon, the mouth 
is furniffied with filaments called cirrhi, or barbies. 
The eye is compofed of the pupil, the iris, and the 
cryftalline humour, which laft is round, that the fifti may 
the better fee in the water. Fifties have no eye lids ; but 
inftead of thefe, nature has given to ieveral fpecies, as the 
eel-pout, a cuticle which anfwers the fame purpofe. The 
part above the eyes, which joins the head to the body, is 
called the nape, or nape of the neck, though fifties proper¬ 
ly have no neck. The coverings of the gills are on each 
fide; in fifties which.have feales, they are generally com¬ 
pofed of two bony laminse or plates; but in others, as the 
eels, See. they are membranous. The membrane of the. 
gills is compofed of rays, either bony or cartilaginous, 
and placed at the throat; fometimes it is hid entirely by 
the coverings of the gills, as in the lole ; fometimes it is 
but half covered, as in molt fifties; but in fome, as the 
fea-fcorpion, it is quite bare. Under theie. coverings, on 
each fide, are four gills, (more or lets,) confifting of a 
b&r-y ; 
