[2501] Cuvier says, that the shell-fish to which Pliny here ascribes a power similar to that of the remora, is, if we may judge from his description of it, of the genus called Cypræa, and has very little doubt that its peculiar form caused its consecration to Venus, fully as much as its supposed miraculous powers. He also remarks that Hardouin, in his Note upon this passage, supposes an impossibility, in suggesting that the lips of this shell-fish can bite the sides of a ship; these lips or edges being hard and immoveable. For some curious particulars as to the peculiar form of some kinds of Cypræa, or cowry, and why they more especially attracted attention, and were held sacred to Venus, see the discussion on them, in the Defence made by Apuleius against the charge of sorcery, which was brought against him.
[2502] Rondelet, B. xiii. c. 12, says that this kind of shell was formerly used for the purpose of smoothing paper.
[2503] Herodotus tells us, B. iii. c. 48, that these were 300 boys of noble families of the Corcyræans, and that they were being sent from Periander of Corinth, to Alyattes, king of Sardes.
[2504] Venus was fabled to have emerged from the sea in a shell.
[2505] Rabelais refers to these wonderful stories about the echeneis or remora, B. iv. c. 62: “And indeed, why should he have thought this difficult, seeing that —— an echeneis or remora, a silly, weakly fish, in spite of all the winds that blow from the thirty-two points of the compass, will in the midst of a hurricane make you, the biggest first-rate, remain stock still, as if she were becalmed, or the blustering tribe had blown their last; nay, and with the flesh of that fish, preserved with salt, you may fish gold out of the deepest well that ever was sounded with a plummet; for it will certainly draw up the precious metal.”
[2506] Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 34; Ælian, Hist. Anim. B. xii. c. 48. Rondelet is of opinion that this mæna was the fish still called menola by the people of Liguria and Rome. It was a fish little valued, and we find it called by Martial, “inutilis mæna,” B. xii. Epigr. 30. Cuvier says, that if it does not change from white to black, as Pliny states, its colours are much more lively in the spring. It also has an offensive smell at certain times, as is noticed by Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 30, and to which Martial alludes in the above epigram. Ovid also mentions it as a fish of no value; held, in all probability, in the same degree of estimation as a sprat with us. It is, no doubt, the Sparus mæna of Linnæus.
[2507] We learn from Aristotle, B. viii. c. 30, that the phycis was a whitish fish, which in the spring assumed a variegated colour. In an Epigram of Apollonides it is called “red;” and Speusippus, as quoted in Athenæus, B. v., says that it is similar to the perch and the channe. Ovid speaks of it as frequenting the shore, and Oppian represents it as dwelling among the sea-weed on the rocks. It also lived on shrimps, and its flesh was light and wholesome; while its most singular property was that of making its nest among the fucus or sea-weed, whence its name. All these characteristics, Cuvier says, are to be found, from what Olivi states, in the “go” of the Venetians, found in the Adriatic, the Gobius of Linnæus; the male of which in the spring makes a nest of the roots of the zostera in the mud, in which the female lays her eggs, which are fecundated by itself, and then protected by it against the attacks of enemies. This is probably the fish that is alluded to by Ovid, Halieut. l. 121, “The fish that imitates, beneath the waves, the pretty nests of the birds.”
[2508] This name, Cuvier observes, is still common on the coasts of the Mediterranean, to two kinds of flying fish, the Dactylopterus, or Trigla volitans of Linnæus, and the Exocœtus volitans of Linnæus. It is to the first, he thinks, that the ancients more especially gave the name of swallow, although Salvianus and Belon are of the contrary opinion. Oppian, Halieut. B. ii. ll. 457-461, ranks the sea-swallow with the scorpion, the dragon, and other fish the spines of which produce mortal wounds, and Ælian, B. ii. c. 5, states to the same effect. But the exocœtus has no spines, while the dactylopterus has terrible ones on its præopercules. Speusippus also, as quoted in Athenæus, B. vii., gives no less decisive testimony, in saying that the sea-cuckoo, the trigla, and the sea-swallow, have a strong resemblance to each other; the fact being that the dactylopterus is of the same genus as the sea-cuckoo, the Trigla cuculus of Linnæus.
[2509] Ovid, Halieut. l. 96, speaks of this fish as having a black back. Cuvier therefore suggests that it may possibly be the perlon, the Trigla hirundo of Linuæus, the back of which is of a dark brown, and the great size of the pectoral fins of which may have given rise to the notion of its being able to fly. It is also very possible, he says, that it may have been the exocœtus, the back of which is of a blue colour.
[2510] Lucerna. Probably, as Cuvier says, one of those numerous molluscs, or zoophytes, which give out a brilliant light, and perhaps the Pyrosoma of Péron. No period being found in the MSS. after the word “milvus”—“kite,” it was long thought that this passage applied to the sea-kite; and it is owing to this circumstance that we find the ichthyologists enumerating a Trigla lucerna. The correction, however, is approved of by Cuvier, who says that he has found none of the genus triglæ to give forth a light; except, indeed, when, like other fish, it begins to be putrid.