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The fish amiae, which are another sort of tunnies, are
so called, because they swim in shoals, as also the pelamydes
or summer whitings. As for the rest that are seen to swim
in shoals and to observe a mutual society, their number is
not to be expressed. And therefore let us proceed to those
that observe a kind of private and particular society one
with another. Among which is the pinoteras of Chrysippus, upon which he has expended so much ink, that he
gives it the precedency in all his books, both physical and
ethical. For Chrysippus never knew the spongotera, for
he would not have passed it over out of negligence.
The pinoteras is so called, from watching the fish called
pina or the nacre, and in shape resembles a crab; and cohabiting with the nacre, he sits like a porter at his shellside, which he lets continually to stand wide open until he
spies some small fishes gotten within it, such as they are
wont to take for their food. Then entering the shell, he
nips the flesh of the nacre, to give him notice to shut his
shell; which being done, they feed together within the
fortification upon the common prey.
The sponge is governed by a certain little creature more
like a spider than a crab. For the sponge wants neither
soul nor sense nor blood; but growing to the stones, as
many other things do, it has a peculiar motion from itself
and to itself, which nevertheless stands in need as it were
of a monitor or instructor. For being otherwise of a substance loose and open, and full of holes and hollowness,
by reason of the sloth and stupidity of it the sponge-watcher assists to give notice when any thing of food enters the
cavities of it, at which time the sponge contracts itself
and falls to feeding.
But if a man approach and touch it, being nipped and
admonished by the sponge-watcher, it seems to shudder
[p. 206]
and shut up the body of it, closing and condensing it in
such a manner as makes it no easy thing to cut it from the
place where it grows.
The purple shellfish also, called porphyrae, clustering
together in a kind of mutual society, build up little combs
for themselves like bees, wherein they are said to generate; and culling out the choicest substance of the moss and
seaweed that stick to their shells, they seem to be in a circular commons among themselves, feeding the one upon
the other's nourishment.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 5.
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