FISH. 671 



were paid for one, provided it exceeded the others in 

 size. 



But if these absurdities were of no more advantage to the 

 science of ichthyology than the later abstinence of flesh meat 

 enjoined by Romish Christianity, the great and continued 

 demand for fish certainly rendered the art of fishing, in all its 

 circumstances, quite perfect, and navigation was so greatly 

 improved, that, by this inducement alone, it may be said to 

 have completed its conquest of the sea. The fisheries of the 

 Mediterranean, encouraged through the religious opinions of 

 the surrounding nations, retained the practices of the ancients, 

 and were the instructors of the moderns on the Atlantic. They 

 continued, as anciently, to confine their pursuit chiefly to the 

 tunny and the mullet, and for this purpose they used the 

 enormous nets called mandragius (from the Greek fxavSpa), 

 and were directed in the operation by a chief styled Rais 

 (head), an oriental word, which may be as ancient as the 

 Carthaginian era. But their stations, if not their system, has 

 in many places greatly varied. 



What the Spaniards of the coasts of the Mediterranean 

 practised was also in vogue at an early period among the 

 Biscayans, on the side of the Atlantic. In pursuing the 

 whale, on board of their balamaras, through the stormy bay 

 which bears their name, they became familiar with the 

 coasts of France, and found, that from Corunna northwards, 

 abundance of fish might be caught as far as the Pertuis 

 Breton and Pertuis d'Autioche, near la Rochelle, fit for salt- 

 ing and general commercial purposes. By degrees they 

 ventured farther, till they reached the entrance of the chan- 

 nel and the west coast of Ireland. So late as 1553, 

 they paid one thousand pounds per annum to the Irish 

 exchequer, for leave to fish during a term of twenty-one 

 years on that coast \ It seems that the Scots had a 



1 " All manner of vessels of other lands coming in the sayd land of 

 Irelond a-fishing, being of the burthen of xii ton, or less, and having one 



