102 SOME FAMOUS TUNNIES. 



tween the two ; further, it is of considerably larger size ; 

 and, finally, its body is fashioned like a wedge. There 

 are some noble fellows among the tunnies ! Aldrovandi 

 records the particulars of a monster which measured thirty- 

 two feet in length, and sixteen feet in girth at its broadest 

 part ! We may be pardoned a little scepticism in reference 

 to this colossal scomber : but Pennant speaks of one, caught 

 off the coast of Inveraray, which weighed a hundred and 

 forty pounds ; and Atti positively affirms that specimens 

 have been caught of eighteen hundred pounds weight. 

 Those weighing a hundred pounds are called by the Sicilians 

 scamperri ; their mezzo tunno, or half-tunny, varies from 

 one hundred to three hundred pounds. For the table, how- 

 ever, your fish should not exceed twenty to thirty pounds ; 

 otherwise, what you gain in quantity you lose in quality. 

 Galen, a good authority, includes amongst fish of hard 

 fibre whales, dolphins, seals, and large old tunnies ; and 

 pronounces the last as almost equal to either of the others 

 in indigestibility, though he acknowledges its greater 

 palatableness. But tunny varies in flavour according to 

 the locality in which it is caught. The best is found off 

 the coasts of Sicily and Provence, though the principal 

 tunny-fisheries of the ancients were carried on at Byzan- 

 tium and off the shores of Spain. Archestratus, a Greek 

 epicure of renown, who travelled over the world " for his 

 stomach's sake," has left it upon record, to benefit pos- 

 terity, that the tunny of Constantinople, Carystium, and 

 Sicily are not to be despised, though those of Hippo- 

 nium, in Italy, are superior in merit ; while he has pane- 

 gyrized the Samian specimens as ineffably good, and only 

 fit to be put upon Jupiter's table, or his own.* 



* Badham, "Ancient and Modern Fish-Tattle," p. 206. 



