APPENDIX. 313 



furnish their luxurious boards, our noble fish never graced their 

 banquets. Apicius might load his table with wild boar, the 

 brains of swans and peacocks, and the tongues of larks and 

 nightingales; or even introduce mullet, turbot, or Colchester 

 oysters as a third course but one exquisite dish was wanting 

 he had no salmon. 



Mutability is the characteristic of every thing human; and 

 often, even the transition from the most distant extremes of 

 luxury and penury is observable in nations, as in individuals. 

 In the same country where the proud lords of the world were 

 wont to give suppers to tributary kings, in saloons dedicated to 

 Jupiter or Venus, at an expense of 30 or 40,000/. the Patrician 

 now dines on a modicum of macaroni, value a few pence ; whilst 

 the descendants of the painted British barbarians, so despised by 

 the haughty Eomans, give, at the present day, the most sumptuous 

 entertainments in Eome ; and some years ago were wont to feed 

 even their domestic servants, in their own country, with a dainty 

 fish of far superior flavour to any that ever appeared on the table 

 of Lucullus or Augustus. 



It is a fact, that about a hundred years ago, such was the 

 abundance of salmon in the Severn, the Humber, the Tyne, and 

 several other English and Welsh rivers, domestic servants sti- 

 pulated with their masters, when hiring, that they should not be 

 fed on this food more than twice a week. In Scotland and 

 Ireland the same agreement continued to be made to a much 

 later period, even in the memory of some old persons now living 

 on the banks of the Tweed, but with reference chiefly to the 

 salted fish. In those days they were unacquainted with the 

 mode of preserving the fish in ice, or even pickling them ; and 

 they had no steamboats to convey them in a few hours to 

 London. 



It has been doubted whether the Salmo Salar of Europe, and 

 the salmon of the North American rivers, are identical. As far 



