Latin Texts & Translations

No less wonderful, too, are the particulars which we find stated relative to the sea-hare. ^[Note] Taken with the food or drink, it is a poison to some persons; while to others, again, the very sight of it is venomous. ^[Note] Indeed, if a woman in a

state of pregnancy so much as looks upon one of these fishes, she is immediately seized with nausea and vomiting—a proof that the injury has reached the stomach—and abortion is the ultimate result. The proper preservative against these baneful effects is the male fish, which is kept dried for the purpose in salt, and worn in a bracelet upon the arm. And yet this same fish, while in the sea, is not injurious, by its contact even. The only animal that eats it without fatal consequences, is the mullet; ^[Note] the sole perceptible result being that its flesh is rendered more tender thereby, but deteriorated in flavour, and consequently not so highly esteemed.

Persons when poisoned ^[Note] by the sea-hare smell strongly of the fish—the first sign, indeed, by which the fact of their having been so poisoned is detected. Death also ensues at the end of as many days as the fish has lived: hence it is that, as Licinius Macer informs us, this is one of those poisons which have no definite time for their operation. In India, ^[Note] we are assured, the sea-hare is never taken alive; and, we are told that, in those parts of the world, man, in his turn, acts as a poison upon the fish, which dies instantly in the sea, if it is only touched with the human finger. There, like the rest of the animals, it attains a much larger size than it does with us.