ACANTHOPTERYGII. 341 



In the first method, when the sentinel, who is posted in an 

 elevated situation, has given the signal that a shoal of tun- 

 nies are approaching, and from what quarter they come, 

 numerous boats set out under the command of a chief, range 

 themselves in a curve-line, and form, by joining their nets, 

 an enclosure which terrifies the tunnies, and which is drawn 

 closer and closer by adding fresh nets within the first, so as 

 always to bring back the fish near the shore. When there 

 remain but a few fathoms of water, a large and final net is 

 spread, which has a sleeve, that is, a bottom lengthened into 

 a cone, and which is drawn towards the land, thus bringing 

 along with it all the tunnies. The little ones are then taken 

 out with the hand, and the large, after they have been killed 

 with poles. This fishery practised on the coasts of Langue- 

 doc, sometimes yields at a single cast two or three thousand 

 quintals of these fish. 



The madrague, which the Italians call tonnaro, is a much 

 more complicated engine. It is, as Brydone calls it, a sort 

 of aquatic castle, constructed at great expence. Some large 

 and long nets held vertically by corks at their upper edge, and 

 by leads and stones at the lower, are fixed by anchors, so as 

 to form an enclosure parallel to the coast, of many hundred 

 toises in extent, sometimes of an Italian mile in length, 

 divided into several chambers by transverse nets, and open 

 on the side of the land by a sort of door. The tunnies, 

 which, in their progress, proceed along the coast, pass be- 

 tween it and the tonnaro ; when arrived at the extremity of 

 the latter, they meet with a large net placed crosswise, which 

 closes the passage against them, and forces them to enter into 

 the tonnaro through the aperture which is made in it. When 

 they have once penetrated thither, they are constrained by 

 divers means to pass from chamber to chamber, as far as the 

 last, which is named corpou (chamber of death). A horizontal 

 net there forms a sort of floor, which a great number of sailors, 



