ACANTHOPTERYGII. 337 



mirably situated for this fishery, derived immense profits 

 from it. 



But it was more especially the city of Byzantium which 

 was enriched by this fish. The shoals of them that entered 

 into the Bosphorus, near Chalcedon, met with a white rock 

 which terrified them, and forced them to turn on the side of 

 Byzantium, and to enter into that gulf, now the port of Con- 

 stantinople, so that all the advantage of this fishery fell into 

 the hands of the Byzantians, the Chalcedonians reaping little 

 or no profit from it. It was, says M. Cuvier, in consequence 

 of this abundance of tunnies, that the gulf in question re- 

 ceived the name of the Golden Horn, and the oracle of 

 Apollo termed Chalcedon the City of the Blind, because its 

 founders did not recognize this inferiority in the site they had 

 chosen. But Gibbon, with more probability, tells us that 

 " the curve which it describes might be compared to the 

 horn of a stag, or as it should seem with more propriety, to 

 that of an ox. The epithet golden was expressive of the 

 riches which every wind wafted from the most distant coun- 

 tries into the secure and capacious port of Constantinople." 

 He adds, indeed, that " the river Lycus, formed by the con- 

 flux of two little streams, pours into the harbour a perpetual 

 supply of fresh, water, which serves to cleanse the bottom, 

 and invites the periodical shoals of fish to seek their retreat 

 in that convenient recess." A little farther on he tells us that 

 " the Propontis has ever been renowned for an inexhaustible 

 store of the most exquisite fish, that are taken in their stated 

 seasons without skill and almost without labour." We are 

 also informed in a note, that among these the Pelamides, a 

 sort of tunnies, were the most celebrated. These, according 

 to M. Cuvier, were the young tunnies of Chalcedon, which 

 Aulus Gellius tells us were the most esteemed of the species. 

 This prodigious quantity of fish still arrives at Constanti- 

 nople at the present day, as in the times of the ancients. 



VOL. X. ' Z 



