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1 This is, as Cuvier has remarked, a crustaceous insect of the parasitical class Lernæa, which are monoculcus [and form the modern class of the Epizoa]. Gmelin, he says, has called it "Pennatula filosa," though, in fact, it is not a pennatula [or polyp] at all. As Dalechamps observes, its ap- pearance is very different from that of a scorpion. Penetrating the flesh of the tunny or sword-fish, it almost drives the creature to a state of madness.
2 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 19. Appian also, in his Halieutics, B ii., makes mention of this animal. Pintianus remarks, that Athenæus, on reading this passage of Aristotle, read it not as "arachnes," but "drachmes;" not the size of a spider, but the weight of a "drachma," or Roman denarius.
3 Or the emperor fish, Cuvier says, the Xiphias gladius of Linnæus.
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