The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 206: CHAP. 19.—THE AURIAS AND THE SCOMBER.

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The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 19.—THE AURIAS AND THE SCOMBER.

All kinds of fish grow 2338 with remarkable rapidity, and more especially those in the Euxine; the reason 2339 of which is the vast number of rivers which discharge their fresh water into it. One fish, the growth of which is quite perceptible, day by day, is known as the amia.2340 This fish, and the pelamides, together with the tunnies,2341 enter the Euxine in shoals, for the purpose of obtaining a sweeter nutriment, each under the command of its own leader; but first of all the scomber 2342 appears, which is of a sulphureous tint when in the water, but when out of it resembles other fish in colour. The salt-water preserves 2343 of Spain are filled with these last fish, but the tunnies do not consort with them.2344