VALUE OF THE SALMON. 3 



who turned his attention to Gaul and Britain, and whose 

 soldiers had no sooner reached the banks of the Garonne, 

 than the saltatory motions of the salmon cleaving his 

 joyous way through the fresh water, after his sojourn in 

 the ocean, excited their attention, admiration, and appe- 

 tite, and procured for him the specific name which has 

 since stuck to him, and to which, though by reason of 

 persecution greatly distressed both in body and mind, 

 he still continues to do justice. We cannot be quite 

 sure that Caesar ever dined off salmon, nor even that in- 

 formation on such a point could be procured from him- 

 self, did we know his present address, for he was one of 

 the very few great men of history who were neither 

 powerful nor particular at table. But we are warranted 

 to please ourselves with conjuring up the image of the 

 Roman soldiers, as they kept watch and ward by the wall 

 of Hadrian and of Antoninus, ever consoling themselves 

 with a cut from the " tail-scud" of a twenty-pounder, 

 prepared in those three-legged camp-kettles which ap- 

 pear to have been designed for the very purpose. And 

 we can feel sure, too, of the contempt with which those 

 old campaigners would look down upon the blinded arid 

 besotted aborigines of Northumberland and the south- 

 eastern counties of Scotland, who, among other odious 

 and unaccountable peculiarities of habit, are more or 

 less authentically recorded to have entirely abstained 

 from the use of fish. Can it be possible that the modern 

 " black-fishers " of the Teviot have in their veins the 

 smallest tincture of the blood of these non-ichthyophagous 

 barbarians ? In the interest alike of mankind and of 

 fishkind, it is to be desired that they had ; that the breed 



