TUNNY. 89 



accustomed route, which for the most part is within a very 

 moderate distance of the land, and consequently is much 

 influenced by the bendings of the coast, thus affording to 

 many districts an opportunity for engaging in an exciting and 

 successful adventure. It could only be in diminished numbers 

 that these successive squadrons could approach the narrow 

 passage of the Hellespont, of their manner in urging their 

 way through which some curious information is given to us 

 by ancient writers. It was observed that as they rapidly swam 

 upward it was their constant custom to range along the shores 

 to the right, until they came to the narrowest part of the 

 Straits which separate Europe from Asia, where stands a rock 

 of remarkable whiteness, at the prospect of which they become 

 greatly terrified, and rush to the opposite side, in which 

 neighbourhood a prosperous fishery was in consequence carried 

 on, and which, from the wealth it brought was termed the 

 Golden Horn. This part of the coast is commemorated by 

 the poet Ovid in his melancholy voyage to the place of his 

 banishment; and from him we learn that it was called by 

 the liomans Tunny Bay. When, on the other hand, the 

 Tunnies are about to leave the Black Sea, they wait the 

 opportunity of a north wind, and hasten along in the opposite 

 course to that by which they went upward; a change which 

 observers attempted to account for by supposing that these 

 fishes possess moderate clearness of sight in one eye only, 

 and that for the sake of safety the blind eye is directed to 

 that side from which but little danger was apprehended. In 

 their different stages of growth these fishes were known by 

 different names, the very young being called Cordyla, and 

 when somewhat older Palamis; but there is little doubt on 

 the other hand that two or three separate species were thus 

 confounded together, as well as at last under the general name 

 of Tunny. 



The Tunny fishery has always been a source of wealth to 

 the countries that have been engaged to it; but we need not 

 describe particularly the ways in which it is at present carried 

 on by the fishermen of Italy, and which appear to differ in 

 some considerable degree from those which were practised in 

 very early times. After referring to Herodotus, therefore, who 

 mentions the net set for the school of Tunnies, (B. 1.) as a 

 VOL. II N 



