And the same
remark applies to them as to the sea-serpents, that they are not found
in very deep water.
Of fishes whose habitat is in the vicinity of rocks there is a
tiny one, which some call the Echeneis, or 'ship-holder', and which is
by some people used as a charm to bring luck in affairs of law and
love. The creature is unfit for eating. Some people assert that it has
feet, but this is not the case: it appears, however, to be furnished
with feet from the fact that its fins resemble those organs.
So much, then, for the external parts of blooded animals, as
regards their numbers, their properties, and their relative
diversities.
15
As for the properties of the internal organs, these we must first
discuss in the case of the animals that are supplied with blood. For
the principal genera differ from the rest of animals, in that the
former are supplied with blood and the latter are not; and the
former include man, viviparous and oviparous quadrupeds, birds,
fishes, cetaceans, and all the others that come under no general
designation by reason of their not forming genera, but groups of which
simply the specific name is predicable, as when we say 'the
serpent,' the 'crocodile'.
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