404 PLT:^^T's natural histoet. [Book IX. 



would have been paid for it by our epicures, if it had only been 

 found off the shores in the vicinity of our city ! 



CHAP. 32. THAT THE SAilE KIXDS AEE IS'OT EVEEUVHERE 



EQUALLY ESTEEilED. 



There is this also in the nature of fish, that some are more 

 highly esteemed in one place, and some in another ; such, for 

 instance, as the coracinus^^ in Egypt, the zeus,^'- also called the 

 faber,^ at Gades, the salpa,^ in the vicinity of Ebusus,^^ which 

 is considered elsewhere an unclean fish, and can nowhere ^*^ be 

 thoroughly cooked, wherever found, without being first beaten 

 with a stick : in Aquitania, again, the river salmon^'' is pre- 

 ferred to all the fish that swim in the sea. 



larger than ours, it is never found at all approaching the weight here men- 

 tioned. 



=^1 The bolty of the modern Egyptians, as previously mentioned. 



32 Or Jove-fish. Cuvier says" that Gillius has applied the name of 

 " faber " to the dory, or fish of Saint Peter, and has stated that the Dal- 

 matians, -who call it the "forga," pretend that they can find in its bones all 

 the instruments of a forge. After him, other modern naturalists have called 

 the same fish Zeus faber ; but nothing, Cuvier says, goes to prove that the 

 dory is the fish so called by the ancients. The epithet even of " rare," 

 given to it by Ovid, Halieut. 1. 112, is far from apphcable to the dory, 

 which is common enough in the ^Mediterranean. If, indeed, the x^^fsyg 

 of the Greeks were the same as the " faber," as, indeed, we have reason to 

 suppose, it would be something in favour of the dory, as Athenseus, B. vii., 

 says that the x^^i^^^Q is of a round shape : but then, on the other hand, 

 Oppian, Haheut. B. v.l. 135, ranks it among the rock-fish which feed near 

 rocks with herbage on them ; while the dory is found only in the deep sea. 



33 Or " blacksmith." 



3* Cuvier says that this fish has still the same name in Italy ; that it is 

 called the " saupe " in Provence, and the " vergadelle " in Languedoc, being 

 the Sparus salpa of Linnaeus ; and that it still answers to all the ancient 

 characteristics of the salpa, eating grass and fiUing its stomach, and having 

 numerous red lines upon the body. It is common, and bad eating, but is 

 no better at Ivica, the ancient Ebusus, than anywhere else. M. De la 

 Eoche, when describing the fishes of that island, says expressly that tlie 

 flesh of the saupe is but very httle esteemed there. Ovid, Halieut. 1. 122, 

 speaks of it as " deservedly held in Uttle esteem." 



'5 See B. iii. c. 11. 



■^ Neither at Ebusus nor anywhere else. 



•^' Hardouin remarks, that Pliny and Ausonius are the only Latin writers 

 that mention this fish; while not 'one among the Greeks speaks of it. It 

 was probably a native of regions too far to the north for them to know 

 much about it. In this country it holds the same rank that the scarus and 

 the mullet seem to have held at the Eoman tables. 



