[2311] This assertion, though untrue, no doubt, as to sympathy with the tides, is in some degree supported by the statement of Rondelet, B. xvi. c. 6, who says that he had often perceived changes in the wind and weather prognosticated by the hide of this animal; for that when a south wind was about to blow, the hair would stand erect, while when a north wind was on the point of arising, it would lie so flat that you would hardly know that there was any hair on the surface.
[2312] Hardouin remarks, that Pliny classes the viper probably among the aquatic animals, either because it was said to couple with the muræna, or else because it has a womb not unlike that of the cartilaginous fishes.
[2313] Hardouin suggests that the proper reading here is probably 144, because in B. xxxii. c. 51, Pliny speaks of 174 different kinds of fishes, and here he says that the crustacea are thirty in number. Daubenton speaks of the species of fishes as being 866 in number, while Lacèpede says that he had examined more than a thousand, but that was far below the real number. Cuvier mentions specimens of about 6000 kinds of fishes, in the Cabinet du Roi. Ajasson remarks upon the learned investigations of Cuvier on this subject, and his researches in Sumatra, Java, Kamschatka, New Zealand, New Guinea, and elsewhere, for the purpose of increasing the list of the known kinds of fishes.
[2314] B. xxx. c. 53.
[2315] About 1200 pounds. Cetti, in his “Natural History of Sardinia,” vol. iii. p. 134, says that tunnies weighing a thousand pounds are far from uncommon, and that they have been taken weighing as much as 1800 pounds.
[2316] The same as the Latin “dodrans,” or about nine inches. This passage is taken almost verbatim from Aristotle, Hist. Anim. c. 34. Cuvier says that this passage, although like the preceding one, taken from Aristotle, is much more incredible, (though Lacèpede, by the way, disputes Pliny’s statement as to the weight of the tunny). “A distance,” Cuvier says, “of from seven to eight feet from one point of the fork of the tail to the other, would denote a fish twenty-five feet in length; and it must be observed, that most of the MSS. of Pliny say two cubits.” Aristotle, however, beyond a doubt says five.
[2317] Now universally recognized as the sly silurus, or sheat-fish, called in the United States the horn-pout, the Silurus glanis of Linnæus. On this formerly much-discussed question, Cuvier has an interesting Note. “There can now be no longer any doubt as to the silurus; it is evidently synonymous with the ‘glanis’ of Aristotle; as we find Pliny, in c. 17 and 51, giving the same characteristics of the silurus, as Aristotle does of the glanis, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 20, and B. ix. c. 37; such, for instance, as the care it takes of its young, and the effects produced upon it by the dog-fish and the approach of storms. It is easy to prove also that it is not the sturgeon, [as Hardouin thought it to be], but the fish that is still called ‘silurus’ by the naturalists, the ‘wels’ or ‘schaid’ of the Germans, the ‘saluth’ of the Swiss, &c.”
[2318] Cuvier remarks, that it is by no means clear what fish is meant by this name, which is only found here and once in Hesychius, who calls it κητώδης, “of the large kind.” Rondelet, in his account of river fish, suggests that “exos” is the proper reading, and that under this name is meant a species of sturgeon. Gesner asks if it might not possibly have been the “brochet;” but, as Cuvier says, that fish was well-known to the Romans under the name of “lucius” [our pike], and it is not sufficiently large for Pliny to compare it to the wels or the attilus, and for Hesychius to have enumerated it among the “large” fishes. It is in accordance, however, with this suggestion of Gesner that the pike genus bears the name of “esox” in modern Natural History.
[2319] Cuvier says that there are found in the river Padus, or Po, several species of very large sturgeons, and that there is one of these which still bears the name, according to Salvian and Rondelet, of adello and adilo. Aldrovandus, he says, calls it adelo or ladano. This Cuvier takes to be the attilus of Pliny. But, according to Rezzonico, Paulus Jovius denies that the attilus or adelus of the people of Ferrara is of the sturgeon genus; but says that it is so much larger than the sturgeon, and so different in shape, flavour, value, and natural habits, that the names of these two fishes were used proverbially by the people, when they were desirous to signify two objects of totally different nature. Rezzonico remarks, that the name given to it in Ferrara was properly “l’adano,” which became corrupted into “ladano,” and expresses it as his opinion that it was the same with the esox of the Rhine. He also states, that, from the exceeding whiteness of the flesh, the ladano was called by the fishermen, sturione bianco.
[2320] Rezzonico says that this may possibly have happened in Pliny’s day, but that in modern times no attilus or ladano is found weighing more than 500 pounds. He says that this fish may, in comparison with the sturgeon, be aptly called an inert fish; for while the sturgeon makes the greatest possible resistance to the fishermen, the other is taken with the greatest ease.