340 SUPPLEMENT ON 



Particular names were given to the tunnies of different 

 ages. The scordyla, or as it was called at Byzantium, 

 auxis, was the young tunny when it first issued from the 

 Euxine Sea in autumn. The Pelamis was the tunny in 

 more advanced age, when it returned to that sea in spring. 



The very large tunnies bore the name of Orycmis, and 

 there were some so gigantic as to have been ranged among 

 the cetacea. 



These large Orycni, according to Dorion, in Athenaeus, 

 were considered to come from the ocean. This was the 

 reason why there were more of them near the coasts of Spain, 

 and in the Tuscan Sea, and it was supposed that they did not 

 return into the more Eastern Seas. 



In modern times, the tunny fishery, without having dimi- 

 nished in product, is almost concentrated in the interior of the 

 Mediterranean. It is no longer carried on, on a grand scale, 

 at Constantinople, nor on the Black Sea, since the establish- 

 ment of the Turks in those fine countries. The fisheries of 

 the coasts of Spain without the straits were supported for a 

 longer time. Those of Conil, near Cadiz, and of the Castle 

 of Sara, near Cape Spartel, were particularly celebrated, and 

 produced great revenues to the Dukes of Medina and Sidonia, 

 their privileged proprietors. More than five hundred men 

 were employed in them ; but. they are now fallen into decay, 

 partly through bad management, and partly, as it is said, be- 

 cause the earthquake which destroyed Lisbon in 1755, has 

 changed the nature of the coast, and determined the tunnies 

 to seek in preference the shores of Africa. 



At the present day it is in Catalonia, in Provence, in 

 Liguria, in Sicily, and in Sardinia, that this fishery is most 

 actively carried on, and yields the most abundant results. 

 It is principally performed in two ways ; by the common 

 tunny-net, and another of a peculiar nature, which the French 

 call madrague, and for which there is no English equivalent. 



