92 TUNNY. 



— collecting all sorts together. Herodotus adds his testimony 

 to the distinction, as also to the antiquity of the casting-net, 

 which demanded considerable skill to use it successfully. His 

 description, in the "Shield of Hercules," is highly expressive: — 



•'Two fish of silver scale, 

 Panting above the wave, the fishes mute 

 Gorged, that beneath them shook their quivering fins 

 In brass; but on the crag a fisher sate 

 Observant; in his grasp he held a net, 

 Like one that poising rises to the throw.") 



"The sean was a drag-net: so the writer, whose letter I 

 enclose, understands it; very large, enclosing the fish by its 

 sweep, and then drawn towards the shore. The passage quoted 

 from Habakkuk, chapter i, 15, might be more literally rendered 

 — 'they drew them under their casting-net, and surrounded 

 them (or gathered them by surrounding) in their scans.' I 

 only mean this as a protest against regarding the A/x(f)i^Xr]aTpov 

 as a tuck-net inside the sean. The expression in Habakkuk 

 is in the Hebrew style an amplification of the same idea. The 

 Avriter of the enclosed does not allude to the huer. If I had 

 been bred at St. John's I should be tempted into that vile 

 practice of punning, and say, 'He was not up to him." — qui 

 est in altum promontorium vel in malum litore infixum, unde 

 Thynnorrum gregem specularetur, quo viso, signum piscatoribus 

 dabat, qui retibus totum gregem includebant. — Notre Bloomfieldii 

 in Pers. This fixing a mast and climbing to the top of it 

 must have been where the shore was low." (We observe that 

 jElian, whom the writer seems to have overlooked, describes 

 this elevation as a stage fixed on a couple of lofty posts, 

 with ledges to enable the huer to get up with ease.) "No 

 need of this in Cornwall; but it shows what a useful person 

 the huer was: they could not do without him. Dear sir, — 

 I had quite forgotten that I possessed anything so much to 

 your wishes as I trust the enclosed will prove, till I found 

 it preserved in a volume of jEschylus — a refreshment to my 

 niemory. — C. V. Leg rice. 



Potter translated 



"onward rush 



The Greeks, amid the ruins of the fleet. 

 As through a shoal of fish caught iu a net, 

 Spreading dcdtructiou," 



