Chapter 6: On fishes

3. Certain kinds of fishes are amphibious, being so called because they have the practice of walking on land and of swimming in the water.

4. Men gave names to the beasts of the field and wild animals and birds, before the fishes, because they were seen and known first. And later, when the kinds of fishes had been learned by degrees, names were applied either from their likeness to land animals, or to suit the species, whether in regard to habits, color, shape, or sex.

6. [Fish receive their names] from sex, as the _musculus_ (mussel) because it is the masculine of whale, for by union with the mussel it is said this monster conceives.

8. There are huge sorts of whales with bodies the size of mountains, like the whale that received Jonah, whose belly was of such magnitude that it held something like a hell, the prophet saying: “He heard me from the belly of hell”.

14. _Thynni_ (tunnies) have a Greek name. They appear in spring-time. They come in on the right side and go out on the left. They are supposed to do this because they see more keenly with the right eye than with the left.

25. _Mullus_, so called because it is _mollis_ (soft) and most tender, by eating which they relate that lust is held in check and that the keenness of the sight is dimmed; moreover men who have often eaten it have a fishy smell. The killing of a mullet in wine brings a distaste for wine to those who have drunk thereof.

34. _Echeneis_, a small fish, half-a-foot long, took its name because it holds a ship[337] back by clinging to it. Though the winds rush and the gusts rage it is seen nevertheless that the ship stands still as if rooted in the sea, and does not move, not because the fish holds it back but merely because it clings to it.

[337] ἔχω, ναῦς.

35. The uranoscope is so called from an eye which it has in its head, by which it always looks upward.

41. The likeness of the eel (_anguilla_) to the snake (_anguis_) has given it its name. Its origin is in mud. Whence whensoever it is taken, it is so slippery that the more determinedly one squeezes it the quicker it slips away. They say, too, that a river of the east, the Ganges, produces them three hundred feet long. If an eel is killed in wine they who drink of it have a loathing for wine.

43. Lamprey (_muraena_) the Greeks term μύραινα, because it coils itself in circles. They say that this fish is of the female sex only, and that it conceives from the serpent. On this account it is enticed by the fishermen by hissing like a serpent, and it is taken. It is killed with difficulty by the stroke of a club but at once by that of a ferule. It is certain that it has its life in its tail, for if the head is struck it is hard to kill it, but when its tail is struck it dies at once.

53. Mussels (_musculi_) as we have said before are shell-fish, and oysters conceive from their milk, and they are called _musculi_ as if it were _masculi_.

56. Certain relate what is incredible, that ships go more slowly if they carry a tortoise’s right foot.