BASS. 191 



north in Scotland. Belon says he found it in the Red Sea. 

 ( Observations, etc., L. 2, c. 67.) 



The Bass is in esteem for the table with us; but it was 

 regarded much more highly, and as among the principal of 

 their dainties, by the luxurious Romans of the Empire; who 

 chose to set the highest value on such as were caught in a 

 recognised district of the Tiber, and which those who prided 

 themselves on their exquisite taste professed to be easily able 

 to recognise. Pliny only says that they were the best which 

 were caught in rivers; but from Horace we learn that they 

 must be of small size, and taken precisely between the two 

 bridges of the city, neither above nor far below. (Satires, 

 b. 2, s. 2, where it is to be observed that the translators into 

 English have chosen to render the word Lupus by the English 

 word Pike, to which fish the Lupus does not answer in any 

 particular.) The favoured fish was known by its pale colour 

 and especially by its white and woolly flesh; and a story is 

 handed down to us by Columella, of the affected horror ex- 

 pressed by one of these fashionable sensualists at a table, where 

 it happened that a Bass not of the right sort was set before 

 him. Having taken a portion into his mouth, he threw it back 

 in apparent disgust, and exclaimed, "I thought it was fish 

 you had set before me." But their ancestors could not have 

 been so fastidious; for Columella, (de re rustica, b. 8, c. 16,) 

 tells us, that from ancient times these fish had been kept in 

 fresh-water ponds, where they bred freely. 



Yet it was the fish preferred by the epicure that ought to 

 have excited disgust; for the favourite station was indebted for 

 its excellency to the great cloaca, or principal drain of the city, 

 and as Willoughby observes, it was owing to their being fed 

 with matters that were discharged from it, that they had ob- 

 tained the colour and taste which elevated them into reputation. 

 A similar observation has been made in modern times. 



Willoughby, and other writers who had seen this fish chiefly 

 in Italy, describe the young as marked with dark spots, which 

 disappear in advanced growth; and Gesner's figure shews it 

 similarly spotted; but no such marks appear in them in our 

 own country. The adult fish reach a considerable bulk; but 

 one of fifteen pounds is considered large. Yet I have been 

 informed of several that weighed twenty pounds, and one has 



