Note 2357 — BOOK IX. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF FISHES.

The trichias, according to Cuvier, is a fish belonging to the family of herrings. A scholiast on Aristophanes attributes the origin of the name to the fine fish bones like hairs (θρὶξ), with which the flesh is filled, which is a characteristic peculiar to the herring kind. Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 15, represents the membras, the trichis, and the trichias, as different ages of the same fish. The trichis was little, and very common. In Aristophanes, Knights, l. 662, we find an obol mentioned as the price of a hundred. From the Acharnæ of the same author, we learn that it was salted as provision for the fleets. Cuvier thinks that everything combines to point out the sardine, the Clupea sprattus of Linnæus, as the trichis, or else a similar kind of fish, the melette of the African coast, the Clupea meletta of the naturalists. In this latter case the trichias, he thinks, may have been the sardine, or, perhaps, the Clupea ficta of Lacèpede, which is called the “sardine” in some places, and at Lake Garda, in Lombardy, more especially.