DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11637#0373
AND LOWER EGYPT. 34.I
If commerce brought all kinds of merchandise
to Cairo, its markets were not without a profusion
of articles necessary to life at the same time.
These its population and luxury attracted thither
in abundance, and a table might be furnished
with a number of excellent dishes at no great
expense. Every kind of fish that the Nile
afforded, was to be found there, and I had an
opportunity of examining three, which I had not
before seen ; the holly, the bayatte, and>the benni.
The first of these fishes, already observed and de-
scribed by Hasselquitz *, is, according to this na-
turalist, of the somewhat equivocal genus labrus, so
called from the Latin word labrum, because the
labrus of the ancients had large thick lips. (Sec
the representation of the bolty , Plate XXVll. fig. 1.)
It is the nelmleux of the history of fishes in the Ency-
clopedic Methodique ; a denomination taken from
the sort of clouds, with which the fins are waved-jr.
The fish from which this drawing was taken, was
a foot long, and four inches and half in its greatest
breadth. The jaws are nearly equal in size, and
furnished with a row of small, slender, close teeth.
Behind this roware several more teeth, or asperities,
so minute, that the eye with difficulty discovers
* Voyages, partie ii. page 50.
f Labrus nihticus, Lin.—Labrus niloticus Cauda integra,Jiinms
dorsali, ani, caudeeque, nebilattt. Arted. Gen. Pise, page 25S.
z 3 them.
If commerce brought all kinds of merchandise
to Cairo, its markets were not without a profusion
of articles necessary to life at the same time.
These its population and luxury attracted thither
in abundance, and a table might be furnished
with a number of excellent dishes at no great
expense. Every kind of fish that the Nile
afforded, was to be found there, and I had an
opportunity of examining three, which I had not
before seen ; the holly, the bayatte, and>the benni.
The first of these fishes, already observed and de-
scribed by Hasselquitz *, is, according to this na-
turalist, of the somewhat equivocal genus labrus, so
called from the Latin word labrum, because the
labrus of the ancients had large thick lips. (Sec
the representation of the bolty , Plate XXVll. fig. 1.)
It is the nelmleux of the history of fishes in the Ency-
clopedic Methodique ; a denomination taken from
the sort of clouds, with which the fins are waved-jr.
The fish from which this drawing was taken, was
a foot long, and four inches and half in its greatest
breadth. The jaws are nearly equal in size, and
furnished with a row of small, slender, close teeth.
Behind this roware several more teeth, or asperities,
so minute, that the eye with difficulty discovers
* Voyages, partie ii. page 50.
f Labrus nihticus, Lin.—Labrus niloticus Cauda integra,Jiinms
dorsali, ani, caudeeque, nebilattt. Arted. Gen. Pise, page 25S.
z 3 them.