THE RED MULLETS 



2713 



ing coasts where the bottom is more or less muddy. Occasionally they visit the 

 British coasts in vast shoals, upward of five thousand having been taken during a 

 single night, in August 1819, in Wey mouth bay; while in May 1851 no less than 

 ten thousand were captured at Yarmouth in the course of a week. Whereas by the 

 ancient Romans these fish were known by the name of mullus, the Greeks termed 

 them trigle. " A singular circumstance," writes Badham, " about this latter syno- 

 nym is, that it not only obtains in modern Greece (where indeed, if anywhere, we 

 might expect to find it), but has also entirely supplanted the old Latin word in 

 Italy; so that no one now ever hears Mugli ! mugli ! hawked about the streets of 

 Rome or Naples; but the constant cry is ' Trigle vive ! trigle /' The inordinate love 

 for these same trigle, in the city and times of the Caesars, would surpass belief; not 



STRIPED RED MULLET. 

 (One-third natural size.) 



only cash, but time too, was profusely lavished upon this one object; quite betimes, 

 and long before office hours, the mullet millionaire was at the pond ere the stars were 

 extinguished, feeding or caressing his fish. It took time, skill, and patience to 

 teach creatures so obtuse to heed the voice that called, or the hand that fondled and 

 fed them; but to warm such cold-blooded animals as these into a reciprocity of regard, 

 was a work of yet greater difficulty. After much trouble and pains, the inhabt- 

 ants of the pond would, however, at length learn to know and acknowledge their 

 master; at his whistle flock emulously together, at his sight leap joyously into the 

 air; and as he plunged his arm into the agitated basin, each individual of the serried 

 shoal strove who should first present fins, and rub scales against the well-known 

 fingers. ' ' 



