fish. 665 



ancient nations sought for such as would attest their prolific 

 power by the quantity of roe they contained; thus in Egypt 

 different Nomes had different types, and they even embalmed 

 specimens of the sacred fish, some of which still remain in 

 the collections of the curious. At Elephantine they honoured 

 the meotis, at Latopolis the latos, at Syene the phagre 

 or phagronius : the oxyrhinchus in the Nome and city of that 

 name, beside the lepedotis and binny in other places \ The 

 zeus seems to have been held in veneration by the Greeks ; 

 and the golden carps of Asia were particularly venerated, as 

 the cyprinus orfus still is, at Orfah \ The Western Celtee had 

 legends of the Brithyll 3 , sometimes designating the trout, at 

 other times the mackarel, and the Morhuah (daughter of the 

 sea) or modern codfish, which the Celto-Cymmerians also 

 seem to have revered by the name of codsyn, as they did the 

 conger, i. e. royal fish of Gothic dialects, in their Cyngyren. 

 But the motives and the objects assigned to these strange 

 deifications are, it is true, often contradictory and always vague, 

 puerile, and of little moment in a zoological point of view ; 

 though, when they are coupled with the historical and legis- 



1 It is impossible to comprehend the rationale of Egyptian veneration ; 

 the two last mentioned, for instance, were both revered and abhorred, 

 because possibly the people took the mystical sense to be the same as the 

 obvious import. 



2 Or Edessa ; they are fed by pious musselmans in the pond of the mosque 

 of Abraham, where it is probable they have continued to be revered from 

 the period Atargatis had her temple here. The moslem legend of Abraham 

 and the pool, is a counterpart to the avatara of Vishnu chatrum, of the 

 same character. 



3 The Brithyll. with the modern Welch may even be taken for the stickle- 

 back, because all these fish are variegated ; but when connected with the 

 mythology of the Celtic nations, may it not derive from Brys, through 

 Brythain, contention ; or that being which strives against tumult, the 

 tumult of the deluge ? The learned Davies has overlooked the Brythill : 

 the Belga? venerated the sturgeon, the northern nations the bogmarus. 



