Apart from characteristics already mentioned, _e.g._ its greed and guile, its hereditary feud with the _Lupus_, its being “the swiftest of fishes” (which attribute, nevertheless, saved it not from being the prey of the slowest, if not the shrewdest of fishes, the _Pastinaca_ or sting-ray,[675]) we find various points of interest noted by ancient writers: (A) “Whilst rain is wholesome for most fishes, it is, on the contrary, unwholesome for the _Cestreus_, for rain and snow superinduce blindness.”[676] (B) The passionate desire of the _Cestreus_, when about to spawn, “renders it so unguarded” that, if a male or female be caught, fastened to a line, allowed to swim to sea, and then gently drawn back to land, shoals of the opposite sex will follow the captive close up to the shore and fill the awaiting nets.[677] This method of fishing, which prevails at Elis at the present day, is but one, as Apostolides indicates, of the many survivals in modern Greece of the ancient craft.[678] (C) The _Mugil_, together with three others, possesses by far the best sense of hearing, “and so it is that they frequent shallow water.”[679] (D) The _Mugil_, anticipating the ostrich, hid its head when frightened and fancied that the whole of its body was concealed. Unlike the ostrich, however, it has long got cured of its “ridiculous character”[680], for, as Cuvier remarks, this trait in modern times has not been observed. (E) The _Mugil_, although vouched for as the greediest and most insatiable of feeders, attained paradoxically the sobriquet of Νῆστις, or _the Faster_. The epithet probably gained currency from the stomach of the fish (like that of most salmon caught in fresh water) rarely being found to contain food. This perhaps may be accounted for by the great length of its gut, throughout which the filmy garbage and vegetable matter forming its chief diet are inconspicuously disposed. “The Cestreus is fasting” even became a proverb and was applied to men who lived with strict regard to justice, because—as Athenæus explains—the fish is never carnivorous.[681] (F) The use in cases of adultery of the _Cestreus_ in Greece and the _Mugil_ at Rome, if not singular among fish, is striking; for it survived into the civilised age of Catullus (“percurrent raphanique mugilesque,”)[682] and of Juvenal (“Quosdam mœchos et mugilis intrat,”)[683]. Indeed, traces of the same barbaric custom still exist among certain tribes on the West Coast of Africa. Gifford writes: “the being clystered (as Holyday expresses it) by a Mugil was allowed by no written law, but it seems to have been an old and approved method of gratifying private vengeance. Isidorus thinks that the fish was selected for this purpose on account of its anti-venereal properties, but he confounds the _Mugilis_ with the Mullet.”[684]