TUNNY. 93 



loosely enough, omitting knocking them on the head with 

 spars and fragments of wreck. It is curious enough that our 

 fishermen do not employ the tuck-sean in the sean fishery for 

 Mackarel, — a kindred fish to the Tunny, — and that too, although 

 there are proofs of their losing a large proportion of what 

 they enclose, from the absence of another net. It would be 

 an improvement to shoot a second net outside the first, with 

 its joining opposite the bend of the former. The inner net, 

 thus first shot, would be used as a tuck-net. 



The following is also from the same writer: — "In a very 

 learned and curious work, 'Textrinum Antiquorum, or an 

 Account of the Art of Weaving among the Ancients,' by Mr. 

 James Yates, M.A., of which only two hundred and fifty 

 copied have been printed, I find an historical notice of the 

 sean. The two kinds of fishing-nets in common use anions 

 the Greeks were the A/j,(f>t^\i]aTpov and the "%arppn\. The 

 etymology of the former word clearly indicates the casting-net; 

 but etymology affording no clue to the sort of net intended 

 by the latter we must have recourse to the passages where it 

 occurs for a clear view of its meaning. In Alciphron, Epist. 

 i, 17, mention is made of persons who are fishing in a bay for 

 Tunnies, and enclose nearly the whole bay with their Xayqvi] 

 — sean, expecting to catch a great abundance. Lucian speaks 

 of aayi]V7] Ovvvev^iKrj — a Tunny sean. The Septuagint trans- 

 lation of a passage in Habakkuk, chapter i, 15, is Er/Kevaev 

 aurov ev a/x^i/SXrjarpa), icac aivr/yayev avrov ev -rais aayrjvai^, which, 

 instead of our common version, more literally is — 'He (the 

 Chaldean) hath drawn him in a casting-net, and gathered him 

 in the seans.' That the sean was used by the Greeks, as 

 with us, to encompass a great extent of water, is shewn by 

 the various uses of the word crayrjur] in a figurative sense, (of 

 which several instances are given, as well by ordinary as sacred 

 writers.) The Greek word having been adopted under the 

 form sagena in the Latin vulgate, this was changed into segne 

 by the Anglo-Saxons, and we, their descendants, have still 

 further abridged it into sean. In the south of England this 

 word is also pronounced and spelt seine, as it is in French. 

 We find in Bede's "Ecclesiastical History" a curious passage 

 on the introduction of this kind of net into England. He 

 says, the people had as yet only learnt to catch eels with nets. 



