< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 81.djvu
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264

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

erect are two little hooks curved like fish hooks and 3 inches long. Its flesh has a good flavor and is sufficient to feed 40 men.

He thus describes the toad-fish:

Fig. 2. Niqui, after Marcgrave, page 178.
This fish is called Niqui by the Brasilians and by our people Pieterman.[1] It has a thick head, a large frog-like mouth, is toothless, has a thick tongue, and the lower jaw is a little longer than the upper. The anterior middle region of the body is rather broad, the hinder narrow and rounded. It is at most 6 or 7 inches long and in the anterior part the breadth is about l 1/2 inches, or a little more. Its eyes are small and prominent, set on cylinders like those of the land crab, the pupil is dark and the iris an ashy-brown. It has large gills and a little back of these a fin (on each side) an inch long and wide, rounded at the edge, on the belly beneath these a little further back the gills join. The fin on the mid-dorsal region is continued almost to the tail, an inch and one half high it grows narrower behind, and on the hindmost parts of the underside of the body there is a corresponding one. The tail is more than an inch long, of less width, shaped like a parallelogram, and rounded at the extremity. In front of the beginning of the dorsal fin it has two strong spines, and above either post-branchial a sharp one. It is covered with skin whose color varying from dark to black, is gray mixed, plainly seen over the whole back, head and sides, and on all the fins. The belly is white, and on the sides it is rather white than black or gray. Over the whole back, head and sides there are scattered little black spots the size of a poppy seed. It lies hidden in the sand near the seashore, and wounds the feet of men stepping on it.

The great excellence of Marcgrave's book, and that which distinguishes it from the works of Gesner and Aldrovandi, is that it is absolutely original. These naturalists, while they did great and good work for natural history, were compilers, copiers, men who systematized the observations of travelers, but who themselves never saw a tithe of the animals whose figures and descriptions they put into their great folios. Hence it is not strange that their pages are filled with figures of mythological monsters, which make it hard at times for the modern naturalist to give them the credit they deserve.

Not so Marcgrave, however. He went to Brazil and lived in its wilds. His figures and descriptions were made from the animals themselves, and very probably in most cases from life.[2] Furthermore all or

  1. ↑ The modern name of this toad-fish is not known to the present writer. Jordan and Evermann ("Fishes of North America," Vol. III., p. 2315) refer to "The Brazilian genus Marcgravia (cryptocentra). . .," which is possibly the fish above described.
  2. ↑ At Freiburg in Mauritia, Count Maurice had gardens in which large numbers of the plants of the country were set out, he also had cages in which
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