STURGEONS. 



155 



At a time when luxury had reached perhaps the greatest 

 development it has ever attained, the Sturgeon is named as 

 one of its principal objects; but it has been thought strange 

 that while the Common Sturgeon is often taken on the shores 

 of Italy, the poet Ovid, as; if unacquainted with it in Italy, 

 should term it 



"The noble Sturgeon from a distant sea." 



Varro also informs us, (de Re rustica, B. 2,) that the best of 

 these fishes were caught near the Island of Rhodes, on which 

 account, we are told, they were sometimes called the Rhodian 

 Galei, or Dog-fishes; to which Clumella adds, (B. 8, C. 16,) 

 that this favourite fish was not found anywhere else. On these 

 accounts Cuvier drew the easy conclusion that our Common 

 Sturgeon was not the species so highly valued by the noble 

 epicures of Rome, but another sjjecies of the same family, the 

 Sterlet, fA. ruthenusj which is still held in high reputation 

 in some countries. 



But in Cuvier's remark above referred to, as compared with 

 Ovid's verses, there is an obvious oversight which requires 

 explanation. Not only does the Roman poet speak of the 

 Acipenser in the terms we have given, but in another portion 

 of the same j)oem he shews that he distinguishes between the 

 Rhodian fish and the true Acipenser, and that, too, by only 

 a slight variation of the same words: — 



"Tuque peregrinis Acipenser nobilis undis... 

 Et preciosus Helops nostris incognitus undis." 



"The noble Sturgeon from a distant sea... 

 Unknown the precious Helops in our sea." 



A Dutch commentator has endeavoured to reconcile the 

 apparent contradiction between the words applied to the 

 Acipense?', and the fact of its not unfrequent occurrence in 

 Italy, by supposing the poet to mean that this fish, as ob- 

 tained in distant countries, was of better quality than such 

 as were procured in his native land. 



But that this most highly-valued of the family of Sturgeons, 

 (the Helops,) was the same with the fish known to the Greeks 

 by the same name, (Elops, or EUops,) we learn as well from 

 Pliny, as from circumstances attending its capture as described 

 by vElian, from which we find no difficulty in tracing the 



