Aristotle, Second Part of THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

II: 128 pages - You are on Page 107

Fishes, all without exception, feed on spawn in the spawning season; but in other respects the food varies with the varying species. Some fishes are exclusively carnivorous, as the cartilaginous genus, the conger, the channa or Serranus, the tunny, the bass, the synodon or Dentex, the amia, the sea-perch, and the muraena. The red mullet is carnivorous, but feeds also on sea-weed, on shell-fish, and on mud. The grey mullet feeds on mud, the dascyllus on mud and offal, the scarus or parrot-fish and the melanurus on sea-weed, the saupe on offal and sea-weed; the saupe feeds also on zostera, and is the only fish that is captured with a gourd. All fishes devour their own species, with the single exception of the cestreus or mullet; and the conger is especially ravenous in this respect. The cephalus and the mullet in general are the only fish that eat no flesh; this may be inferred from the facts that when caught they are never found with flesh in their intestines, and that the bait used to catch them is not flesh but barley-cake. Every fish of the mullet-kind lives on sea-weed and sand. The cephalus, called by some the 'chelon', keeps near in to the shore, the peraeas keeps out at a distance from it, and feeds on a mucous substance exuding from itself, and consequently is always in a starved condition. The cephalus lives in mud, and is in consequence heavy and slimy; it never feeds on any other fish. As it lives in mud, it has every now and then to make a leap upwards out of the mud so as to wash the slime from off its body. There is no creature known to prey upon the spawn of the cephalus, so that the species is exceedingly numerous; when, however, the is full-grown it is preyed upon by a number of fishes, and especially by the acharnas or bass. Of all fishes the mullet is the most voracious and insatiable, and in consequence its belly is kept at full stretch; whenever it is not starving, it may be considered as out of condition. When it is frightened, it hides its head in mud, under the notion that it is hiding its whole body. The synodon is carnivorous and feeds on molluscs. Very often the synodon and the channa cast up their stomachs while chasing smaller fishes; for, be it remembered, fishes have their stomachs close to the mouth, and are not furnished with a gullet.

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