We come now to the sea-sparrow. Diodes enumerates this fish among the drier kinds. But Speusippus, in the second book of his Things resembling one another, says that the sea-sparrow and the buglossus and the tænia are very much alike. But Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, writes—“And in the same manner the greater number of the small fish have young once a year; such as those which are called chyti, which are surrounded by a net, namely, the chromis, the sea-sparrow, the tunny, the pelamys, the cestreus, the chalcis, and others of the same sort.” And in his treatise on Animals he says—“These fish are cartilaginous, the sea-cow, the turtle, the torpedo, the ray, the sea-frog, the buglossa, the sea-sparrow, the mussel.” But Dorion, in his book on Fishes, says—“But of flat fish there is the buglossus, the sea-sparrow, the escharus, which they also call the coris.” The buglossi are mentioned also by Epicharmus in his Hebe's Wedding—
Hyænides, buglossi, and a citharus.And Lynceus the Samian, in his Letters, says that the finest sea-sparrows are procured near Eleusis, in Attica. And Archestratus says— [p. 521]
Remember then to get a fine sea-sparrow,But the Romans call the sea-sparrow rhombus; which, how- ever, is a Greek name. And Nausicrates, in his Sea Captains, having first mentioned the sea-grayling, proceeds in this manner—
And a rough-skinn'd buglossus, near the port
Of sacred Chalcis
A. Those yellow-fleshed fish, which the high wave
That beats Aexona brings towards the shore,
The best of fish; with which we venerate
The light-bestowing daughter of great Jove;
When sailors offer gifts of feasts to heaven.
B. You mean the muller, with its milky colour,
Which the Sicilian multitude calls rhombus.
