88 TUNNY. 



represented witli the head of a fish, as signifying their con 

 nexion with the sea and fishing; the name of the city also 

 having been derived from the fishery there established. It is 

 not difficult to suppose that when the importance of this fishery 

 and the method of conducting it had extended to the Greeks, 

 the name applied to the fish would also be received, and 

 supplant any other, if such other had previously existed. 



The large examples of this fish already mentioned may be 

 supposed to have attained a greater age than usually falls to 

 the lot of this species, since there is no reason to give credit 

 to an ancient opinion which affirmed that the life of a Tunny 

 did not amount to more than a couple of years. But these 

 individuals, contrary to the habits of their race, are found to 

 be solitary, which may arise from the circumstance that they 

 have survived the instinctive influences of their sex; but there 

 are others, not nearly so large, which in their wanderings 

 limit themselves to companies of three or four, and it is such 

 chiefly that visit the British coasts, especially on the western 

 borders of the Channel, in the summer and autumn, when 

 their headlong eagerness often drives them into the floating 

 nets, in which they become entangled, and where not unfre- 

 quently they are held by the roughness of their teeth alone. 

 They even reach the borders of Scotland, and have been taken 

 at Gothenburg, in Sweden, in pursuit of herrings and other 

 fishes of similar size and habits; but I have not been informed 

 of their taking a bait with us, although where they are more 

 abundant the fishermen obtain success with even a clumsy 

 imitation of living fish, of which the Sardine, Flying Fish, and 

 Mackarel are the most successful. 



It is believed that this fish is listless in the winter, and 

 does not wander away from the district it happens to be in 

 when that season overtakes it; but in spring it revives, and 

 multitudes then gather together in the Atlantic, and press 

 towards the coast of Spain, from which they pass through the 

 Straits of Gibraltar in their journey towards the Black Sea, 

 in which alone it was the ancient although erroneous belief 

 that they chose to deposit their spawn. This proceeding forms 

 a regular system of migration, and is conducted in well-ordered 

 columns, in which the strongest and most rapid take the lead, 

 while the rest are content to follow their leaders along the 



