246 TACKLE— CURIOUS METROBS—S I LURUS— EELS 



Where fish, however, pay any regard whatever to their ova, 

 it is usually, but not always, on the father that the duty falls. 

 " Omnium " in Pliny is to be read not with " solus " but with 

 " edita ova." This reading advances the quite different claim 

 that the Silurus is the only male that includes in its watch and 

 ward not merely its own but promiscuously also the eggs of 

 other fish. Perhaps the same start of surprise awaits him, on the 

 Pentecostal and last day of his vigil, as that of the hen when 

 she first beholds a mixed brood of chickens and ducklings 

 emerging from under her breast. 



Pliny reveals some fabulous uses of the Silurus. In XXXII. 

 28, fresh caught Siluri are an excellent tonic for the voice. 

 In 46, by the smoke and scent of a burnt Silurus, especially 

 one hailing from Africa (!), the pangs of child-birth are said 

 to be greatly eased. In 40, for curing " ignes sacros " or the 

 malady of St. Anthony's fire, the appHcation of the bellies of 

 living frogs, or of ashes from a Silurus, were two of the nostrums 

 recommended. 



The fourth and last method, for the capture of Eels, given 

 by yElian,! although almost certainly cribbed from Oppian,- 

 but with a local habitation and a name carefully thrown in to 

 suggest originality, reads much as follows : 



The eeler from a high bank of the " river Eretaenus, where 

 the eels are the largest and by far the fattest of all eels," lets 

 down at a turn of the stream some cubits' length of the intestines 

 of a sheep. An eel, seizing a bit of it at the nether end, tries 

 to drag the whole away, on which the fisher applies the other 

 end (which is fixed to a long tubular reed serving the place of 

 a fishing rod) to his mouth, and blows into the sheep's gut. 

 This presently swells ; the fish receiving the air in his mouth 

 swells too, and unable to extricate his teeth is lugged out, 

 adhering to the inflated intestines. 3 



" Gin these be joys of artful eeling, oh ! gie me Essex 



1 XIV. 8. 



- Hal., IV. 450 ff. 



^ " Bobbing for eels," with a bunch of worms on worsted is of hke principle, 

 but lacks the pneumatic touch. The eels seem to get their teeth caught in the 

 worsted, and are pulled out before they can let go. See antea, p. 42, for the gar- 

 fish of the Solomon Islands being caught from a kite by a hookless spider's 

 web. 



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