[355] Compare J. Britten and R. Holland, Dict. of English Plant Names (London, 1884), III. 576. Wright in his Dialect Dictionary, “Crow-silk, Confervæ, and other Algæ, especially C. rivularis.”
[356] Oppian, III. 421. Τῆμος ὲπεντύνει κύυρτου δόλον. These were traps of wickerwork, resembling our lobster pots or weels, in which the fish were caught as they flocked to suck at the seaweed, with which the stones (placed inside the traps to sink them) were covered. Cf. Ælian, XII. 43, who states that for this sort of fishing fishermen made use of φύκους θαλασσίου.
[357] N. H., XIII., 3. Cf. also ibid., I, 2.
[358] Voyage of the Beagle, ch. 20: “Two species of fish of the genus scarus, which are common here (Keeling Island), exclusively feed on coral.” Sir R. Owen, “The anterior teeth are soldered together and adapted to the habits and exigences of a tribe of fishes which browse on the lithophytes, that clothe the bottom of the sea, just as ruminant quadrupeds crop the herbage of the dry land.”
[359] N. H., II. 17: μόνος ἰχθὺς δοκεῖ μηρυκάζειν. Cf., however, N. H., IX. 50.
[360] VIII. 2, 13.
[361] Arist., N. H., II. 13. Pliny, XI. 61. “Piscium omnibus (dentes) serrati, præter scarum: huic uni aquatilium plani.”
[362] In VII. 113, we again find Athenæus misrepresenting Aristotle.
[363] “This idea of rumination,” according to Mr. Lones, op. cit., p. 237, “by the parrot wrasse (Scarus cretensis), which is clearly the Skaros of the Ancients, probably arose from its grazing or cropping off marine plants, and grinding them down, assisted by its having a strongly walled stomach” (cf. the functions of the gizzard of a fowl) with which, out of the myriads of fishes, the scarus and his tribe alone are endowed. On p. 162, “The stomach of a skaros is without a cæcum, and appears to be of far simpler form than that of most fishes.”
A trout often appears to ruminate, working its jaws quietly for a considerable time—perhaps this is merely to settle its last mouthful comfortably and to its liking. According to Banfield, in Dunk and other islands off Northern Australia, a fish, very similar to only even more brilliant in hues than the Pseudoscarus rivulatus, is able by the strength of its teeth (some sixty or seventy, set incisorlike) to pull from the rocks limpets (its chief food), which when steadfast can resist a pulling force of nearly 2000 times their own weight! It swallows molluscs and cockles whole, and by its wonderful gizzard grinds them fine. See Confessions of a Beachcomber (London, 1913), p. 156.