126 The Poets and Nature. 



odour of a cooking conger is so divine that it would make 

 a dead man sniff." 



The mythical fragrance of the cuttlefish suggested to 

 Domenichi to give the Cardinal Ferrara, as device, a sepia, 

 with the motto, " Sic tua non virtus," meaning, that as the 

 cuttlefish by its sweet odour attracts other fish around it, 

 so the Cardinal, by the sweetness and affability of his dis- 

 position, drew all men after him but not to eat them.) 



The "daintie," "greedy," "fool-gudgeon" (in Crabbe, 

 Moore, Cowper, and a dozen others a simile for dupes and 

 victims of lawyers) ; the halibut, dignified by Cowper's verse 

 as "the king o' the sea;" the herring, "sheathed in silvery 

 green," moving "in crowds amazing," by many besides 

 Swift and Darwin 



" The migrant herring steers her myriad bands 

 From seas of ice, to visit warmer strands ; 

 Unfathomed depths and climes unknown explores, 

 And covers with her spawn unmeasured shores." 



(Not that the herring attains in verse any prominence, 

 adequate either to its intrinsic worth or its legendary 

 importance. In folk-lore it is very conspicuous indeed, 

 and in contemporary superstition no other fish, naturally 

 enough, fills so large a space in the fancy of our sea-going 

 folk, as may well be, if only from the Scotch fisherman's 

 maxim, " No herring, no wedding." The connection may 

 not at first be obvious to all, but the Scottish registers make 

 it clear enough. In the returns for the third quarter of 

 1871, for instance, the registrar of Fraser burgh states that 

 the herring fishery was very successful, and the value of 

 the catch, including casks and curing, may be set down 

 at i 30,000 sterling, and the marriages were 80 per cent, 

 above the average. On the other hand, the registrar of 

 Tarbert has to report a steady falling off in the fishing at 

 that creek, and consequently the quarter passed without 

 an entry in the parish register. The registrar of Lochgilp- 



