256 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



affected by the exhibition of such wholesale butchery. 

 Perhaps the impression produced on our minds 

 would have been different if the fishermen had had a 

 shadow of danger to encounter, or if the tunnies had 

 been able to offer the slightest resistance in their 

 struggles for freedom ; and it seemed to us impossible 

 to avoid feeling the deepest emotion in witnessing so 

 unequal a strife, and in observing the mute anguish in 

 which the convulsive movements of the victims were 

 the only indications of the agony which was so 

 wantonly inflicted upon them. It was quite dif- 

 ferent with our sailors, who were perfectly radiant 

 with delight. As fishermen, they could only see 

 and judge of things after the fashion of their 

 calling, and the fiehing had been superb. In 

 three hours 554 fish had been harpooned, weigh- 

 ing on an average 176 lbs. Besides this, the 

 chambers of the madrague still contained about 

 400 captives ; the proprietor might therefore count, 

 at the very beginning of the season, upon having 

 caught about seventy tons of the tunny fish, which 

 would, at the least, be equivalent to the sum of 

 43,000 francs (1720/.) Here then, in one fishing, 

 nearly enough had been gained to pay the whole 

 expenses of the fonnara. 



A small island, in which every inch of productive 

 ground has to be wrested from the naked rock, is 

 necessarily not well adapted for the multiplication 

 of independent animal species. For this reason, 

 Favignana possesses hardly any animals beyond those 

 w^hich have been subjugated to the use of man, or 

 which live at his expense, or which, from their in- 



