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 2. Now, as a long discussion had taken place about fish, it was plain that Cynulcus was annoyed at it; and so the excellent Democritus, anticipating him, said—But, O you men fish, as Archippus says, you have omitted (for I too must throw in a little contribution of my own) those which are called fossil fishes, which are produced at Heraclea, and near Tium, in Pontus, which is a colony of the Milesians, though Theophrastus gives us an account of them. And this very same philosopher has also told us about those that are congealed in ice the whole winter, so that they have no feeling whatever, and make not the slightest motion, until they are put into the saucepans and boiled. And these fish have this especial peculiarity, which also belongs in some degree to the fish which are called fossil fish in Paphlagonia. For it is said that ditches are dug in those places to an exceeding depth, where no overflow of rivers ever reaches, nor of any other waters whatever; and yet in those ditches there are found living fishes.

3. But Mnaseas of Patra, in his Periplus, says that the fish in the river Clitor are not dumb; though Aristotle has stated in writing that the only fishes which have any voice are the scarus and the river-hog. And Philostephanus, who was a Cyrenæan by birth, and a friend of Callimachus, in his treatise on Extraordinary Rivers, says that in the river Aroanius, which flows through Pheneum, there are fish which sing like thrushes, and that they are called the poiciliæ. And Nymphodorus the Syracusan, in his Voyages, says that there are pike in the river Helorus, and large eels, so tame that they take bread out of the hands of any who bring it to them. And I myself, and very likely many of you too, have seen cestres tamed to the hand in the fountain of Arethusa, near Chalcis; and eels, having silver and golden earrings, taking food from any one who offered it to them, and entrails from the victims, and fresh cheese. And Semus says, in the sixth book of his Delias—"They say that a boy once dipped a ewer into the well, and brought water to some Athenians who were sacrificing at Delos, to wash their hands with; and he brought up, as it happened, some fish in the ewer along with the water: and that on this the soothsayers of the Delians told them that they should become the lords of the sea."

4. And Polybius, in the thirty-fourth book of his Histories,