Note 2393 — BOOK IX. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF FISHES.

Literally, the “little ass.” Cuvier says, that nearly all the naturalists, following Rondelet, apply this name to the merlus, the Gadus merluccius of Linnæus, or else the genus of the gadus, or cod, in general. It is true, he says, that the “onos,” or “ass” of the Greeks, the “asellus” of the Romans, was also known as the γαδὸς, by the Greeks; but still this onos had very different characteristics from those of the Gadus merluccius; and among all the gadi of Linnæus, he finds the only one that presents any of them to be the Gadus tricirrhatus, or sea-weasel, which he therefore thinks to represent the ancient “asellus.”