236 MARITIME PISCICULTURE. 



out with delight, ' Order ! order !'* just as other people 

 would say, * A fine day ! ' " When night has come, all 

 are at their posts round the labyrinths, watching in pro- 

 found silence, in order not to alarm the fish which are 

 entangling themselves in the insidious routes prepared 

 for them. They wait till the chambers are full, and 

 the moment they perceive them overcrowded, hasten to 

 relieve them ; for, if overcrowded, the eels might be- 

 come restive, and break through the partitions which 

 confine them. The eels are therefore removed in cir- 

 cular baskets, suspended in the water between a couple 

 of poles, and are kept alive till needed. As Bonaveri 

 relates that, during a furious storm on the night of the 

 4th October 1697, there were caught in the lagoon 200 

 baskets of eels and more than 1000 baskets of fish, the 

 whole weight must have exceeded 645,040 Ib. In the 

 basin of Caldirolo, Spallanzani saw taken, during a 

 single October night in 1792, 12,800 Ib. of fish, "which," 

 adds that great naturalist, " is little in comparison of one 

 capture of 40,000 Ib. weight, and of another of 19,200 Ib., 

 in the same basin and in the same space of time. 



When any single valley in one night makes a capture 

 weighing 48,000 Ib., a cannon announces the event to 

 the town, in order that, in the middle of their slumbers, 

 its inhabitants may receive the good news. On such 

 happy occasions it is the custom for strangers, ladies of 

 distinction, the family of the farmer-general, and the 

 bishop himself, to visit the valley privileged to be the 

 scene of such extraordinary captures. The commander 

 does the honours of his domain, exhibiting to all the 

 rich harvest, the produce of which the fishermen convert 

 into an ample feast. Eel-broth, so esteemed by the 

 Greeks, but somewhat vulgarised in the eyes of M. 

 Coste by an admixture of cabbage, is the leading dish 

 at the hospitable table. Then follow boiled mullet, 

 plaice, dories, and then again the finest eels, and all the 



* We suspect that M. Coste has mistaken ordine, which cer- 

 tainly means "order," ior. aM' ordine "make ready." 



