OF ALL COUNTRIES. 13 



unlucky reptile into shallow water where he could not dive, 

 and speared him then and there. This somewhat resembles 

 the process of cockatoo-shooting in Australia, which can 

 only be effected by the sportsmen dressing themselves up 

 in green boughs, and creeping along with the utmost caution 

 so as to elude the vigilance of the two sentinels always 

 on the look-out from the highest boughs of a gum-tree. 

 As one reads all the various designs for the entrapping and 

 destruction of these helpless creatures, one is visited some- 

 times with a qualm of compunction on thinking of the 

 tremendous catalogue of never-ending treacheries which 

 characterise the whole dealings of man with every other 

 portion of living creation. Nor was Egyptian ingenuity 

 confined merely to capture, but extended also to modes of 

 preservation. The art of drying and curing fish, not dis- 

 covered in Europe till the fourteenth century, that parent 

 period of so many modern employments, was known of old 

 in the land of the Pharaohs ; and pictures are still extant 

 representing the different stages of the process, and showing 

 amongst other things how the big fish were cut in pieces 

 previous to being desiccated. In one respect, too, that of 

 the wholesale destruction of the fry, the fishermen of Egypt 

 seem to have been open to the same charge as the most reck- 

 less of modern caterers. Every year, after the inundation, 

 there were found in the receding waters numbers of small 

 fish from six to nine inches long, which Djewhari calls Sir, 

 and identifies with the ii(uvi<^ ; while Dioscorides considers 

 them to be the same as the Sahnat or Sihna, though Makrizi 

 distinguishes the two, as does also Avicenna according to 

 De Sacy. This may be true enough, and the species may 

 have been one incapable of attaining a larger growth ; 

 but when we read of the immense quantities caught after 

 the closing of the sluices at high Nile, and find that 

 throughout the rest of the year the great river was but 



