30 FISHES OF FANCY. 



the water, but nothing is said of his having been an enthu- 

 siastic angler. The inference no doubt was that, as no man 

 could be expected to live all his life by the side of a run- 

 ning stream, especially with long intervals of idleness in his 

 days, without angling, the saint eked out his income, and 

 passed his time, by fishing. It was in that notable passage 

 of the river, when he carried the child-Christ across, that he 

 caught the John Dory, a sea-water fish, and left the marks of 

 the pinch which he gave it to be handed down in memoriam 

 to the Dory's posterity. This fish, by the way, had a certain 

 classical sanctity as being called Zeus, and Aristotle has a 

 " sacred fish," the Anthias, which, from his description of 

 its habits, has been conjectured to be the John Dory. It 

 was also called Faber, " the blacksmith," and so under the 

 protection of Hephaistos, Mulciber, or Vulcan. Again, the 

 Apah, or king-fish, * is a native of the eastern seas, and it 

 is not a little singular that, by a people so distant and 

 secluded as the Japanese, this fish (originally included in 

 the genus Zeus) should also be regarded as devoted to the 

 Deity, and the only one that is so. The Apah is by them 

 termed Tai, and is esteemed as the peculiar emblem of 

 happiness, because it is sacred to Jebis or Neptune. 



St. Zeno was an enthusiastic angler, and therefore worked 

 for, and earned, his position as a patron saint. He was 

 probably an advocate of preserving waters. To this list I 

 have added the patron saint of Scotland, for we read in 

 the adventures of the " Seven Champions of Christendom," 

 how, on the fourth day, by the emperor's appointment, 

 the worthy knight St. Andrew of Scotland obtained the 

 honour to be the chief challenger for the tournament, " and 

 how his tent was framed to represent a ship swimming 

 upon the waves of the sea, environed by dolphins, tritons, 



* Yarrell. 



