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

Chapter 258: CHAP. 71.—FISHES WHICH ARE ENCLOSED IN A STONY SHELL—SEA ANIMALS WHICH HAVE NO SENSATION—-OTHER ANIMALS WHICH LIVE IN THE MUD.

By the Elder Pliny

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About This Book

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. 71.—FISHES WHICH ARE ENCLOSED IN A STONY SHELL—SEA ANIMALS WHICH HAVE NO SENSATION—-OTHER ANIMALS WHICH LIVE IN THE MUD.

Those animals, however, it must be admitted, which lie enclosed in a stony shell, have no sensation whatever—such as the oyster,2753 for instance. Many, again, have the same nature as vegetables; such as the holothuria,2754 the pulmones,2755 and the sea-stars.2756 Indeed, I may say that there is no land production which has not its like in the sea;2757 no, not even those insects which frequent our public-houses 2758 in summer, and are so troublesome with their nimble leaps, nor yet those which more especially make the human hair their place of refuge; for these are often drawn up in a mass 2759 collected around the bait. This, too, is supposed to be the reason why the sleep of fish is sometimes so troubled in the night. Upon some fish, indeed, these animals breed 2760 as parasites: among these, we find the fish known as the chalcis.2761