The John Dory

These are all primitive spiny-finned fish, and the John Dory has these characteristics to a high degree. It bears the same relationship, in appearance, to a fish of more sophisticated design (like, say, the grey mullet) as does a motor car of the late nineteenth century to those of the mid twentieth century.

An interesting feature of the John Dory is the presence on either side of a dark spot, for which a number of explanations have been given. The most popular is that the marks were left by the fingers of Saint Peter, after he had thrown back into the sea a specimen which had been landed and which had provoked his sympathy by making distressed noises. (It is believed that this is the fish which Saint Peter took up, on the instructions of Christ, to find in its mouth the silver which he was to pay as tribute, but this belief has arisen as a result of confusion between the John Dory and a fresh-water species with somewhat similar markings.) An alternative explanation is that Saint Christopher, while he was carrying Jesus on his shoulder through the waters, stooped down and picked up a John Dory, on the sides of which his finger marks remained ever after.