CHAPTER XXXIX 



FISH WITH AND WITHOUT SCALES — METHODS 

 OF FISHING — VIVARIA 



In Moses' enumeration of what the tribesmen might or might 

 not eat, there is a careful distinction by their names of the 

 creatures in fur and feathers, but the fishes are merely divided 

 (as were the animals entering the ark into " clean and unclean," 

 Gen. vii.) into " all that have fins and scales ye shall eat : 

 and whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye shall not eat ; it 

 is unclean unto you" (Deut. xiv. 9, 10). 



This classification has often been assumed to have been 

 taken from the prohibitions enjoined by the Egyptian priest- 

 hood, but without any authority, because we do not know 

 what fish were actually ruled out by their dietary canon. 

 Moses not only Umits the use of fish as an article of food, as 

 originally granted in the covenant with Noah (Gen. ix. 2, 3), 

 but fails to discriminate between fish from the sea and else- 

 where. He does, however, exclude all scaleless fish such as 

 the important group of siluridae, skates, lampreys, eels, and 

 every variety of shell fish.i 



^ The classification, if unscientific and incorrect — e.g. Eels possess rudi- 

 mentary scales — had as its practical purpose the elimination of the SiluridcB — 

 i.e. the Catfish Clarias, Bagrus, Synodontis, etc. — which even if, as with the 

 Catfish, pleasant to tlie taste were very unwholesome, causing diarrhoea, 

 rashes, etc. Doctors inform me that even in our day Jews who eat crustacece, 

 especially lobsters, are far more hable to these diseases than Christians — 

 presumably from an abstention of centuries. The ban on Eels from their 

 infrequency in Palestine was almost superfluous, but on the Clarias, which 

 abounds in and near the sea of Tiberias, very practical. The abstention, 

 whether originating from supposed reasons of health or from some obscure 

 tabu, was and still is prevalent in Asia, Africa, and South America. A curious 

 trace of it at Rome is discoverable in Numa's ordinance that in sacrificial 

 offerings no scaleless fish, and no scarus should figure (Pliny, N. H., XXXII. re) . 

 The abstention is sometimes merely partial, as with the Karaycis in the 

 Amazon valley, see W. A. Cook, op. cit., p. 96. 



414 



