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

Chapter 263: CHAP. 76.—FISHES THE BELLY OF WHICH OPENS IN SPAWNING, AND THEN CLOSES AGAIN.

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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. 76.—FISHES THE BELLY OF WHICH OPENS IN SPAWNING, AND THEN CLOSES AGAIN.

The sea-needle,2804 or the belone, is the only fish in which the multitude of its eggs, in spawning, causes the belly to open asunder; but immediately after it has brought forth, the wound heals again: a thing which, it is said, is the case with the blind-worm as well. The sea-mouse 2805 digs a hole in the earth, deposits its eggs there, and then covers them up. On the thirtieth day it opens the hole, and leads its young to the water.