HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
59 
yellow, and violet colours. There are also the perroquet fish, which is green, with a 
yellow head, and white hooked beak; they swim in shoals, as the birds, from whom 
•their name is derived, fly in flocks. 
The armed fish is small and of a very whimsical shape: its head is like that of 
the pike, which bears on its back seven bony bristles as long as its body, the prick 
of which is poisonous: they are united by a pellicle that resembles the wing of a 
bat. It is marked from its mouth to its tail with brown and white stripes, like a 
zebra. There is a fish which is square, like a trunk, whose name has been given to 
it, and is armed with two horns like a bull: there are several kinds which never 
attain to any considerable size; as the porcupine fish, bristled over with long prickles, 
and the polypus, which crawls in the swamps, with its seven claws armed with air¬ 
holes : it changes its colour, spouts forth water, and endeavours to defend itself against 
any one who attempts to take it. These strange fish are found in the ledges and 
reefs of rocks, and are seldom if ever applied as food. 
The fresh-water fish are better than ours; and appear to be of the same kind as- 
those which are taken in the sea. Among these the best are the lubin, the mullet, 
and the carp; the cabot, that lives in the torrents formed by rocks, to which it ad¬ 
heres by means of a Concave membrane, and very large and delicate shrimps. The 
eel is a kind of conger; there are some from seven to eight feet in length, and of 
the thickness of a man’s leg ; they retire into the holes of the rivers, and sometimes 
devour those who are so imprudent as to bathe there. 
There are lobsters, or Langoustes, of a prodigious size, though their claws are- 
comparatively small; they are of a blue colour marbled with white. There is a 
small kind of them, of a most beautiful form; they are of a sky-blue colour, with 
two small claws, divided into two joints, which are like a knife whose blade turns 
back into the handle. It seizes its prey as if it were maimed. 
There is a great variety of crabs; the following are the most remarkable : a kind, 
rough with tubercles and prickles, like a madrepore; one which has on its back the 
impression of five red seals; another, whose claws terminate in the form of an horse¬ 
shoe. There is a kind also which is covered with hair, is entirely unprovided with 
claws, and sticks to the sides of ships: there is also a gray crab, with a smooth in¬ 
dented shell, on which appear several whimsical and irregular figures, that are exactly 
similar on each crab. There is another, whose eyes are placed at the termination of 
two long tubes, like telescopes. When it does not employ them, it lays them in 
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