194 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [vol. 50 



used than now. Sir Thomas Brown (1662) declared it to be "es- 

 teemed by some as a festival fish, though it affords but a glutinous 

 jelly, and the skin is beset with stony knobs after no certain order." 

 Buckland thought that the males are best as food, their flesh being 

 soft, rich, and oily — doubtful recommendations for Anglo-American 

 tastes. In Scotland and northern England the fish appears to be 

 held in higher esteem than elsewhere ; "some inhabitants of Edin- 

 burgh deem it second only to the Turbot if fried or baked," and in 

 Berwickshire "the cock especially is reported to be excellent when 

 fried or baked." Scotch appreciation of the value of the fish is be- 

 tokened in "The Antiquary" of Walter Scott. The knowing hero, 

 Jonathan Oldbuck, puts the Turbot or Bannock-fluke and male 

 Lumpsucker on a par. "I'll bid you fair, I'll bid you a shilling for 

 the Fluke and the Cock-padle, or six-pence separately," and closes 

 with the fishwife by giving half-a-crown for the two "and a half-a- 

 dozen o' Partans [crabs] to make the sauce" (chap. 11). The sister 

 housekeeper, while objecting to the price, does not object to the com- 

 parative valuation (chap. 14). 



On the other hand, along the west coast of Scotland, "the fisher- 

 men boil them down with vegetables for their pigs" ; for that pur- 

 pose at least they "consider them to be fattening food." 



Fabricius long ago (1780) told that the Greenlanders eat the flesh 

 cooked or dried, as well as the skin from which the tubercles only 

 have been taken ; the ovaries are also used, cooked with the liver or 

 dried, while the eggs themselves are eaten raw. 



Tosh has recorded (1894) that along the eastern coast of Scot- 

 land "the fishes are very abundant," and "when they come close in- 

 shore to spawn they are a great nuisance to the salmon fishermen." 



Olden belief and superstition assigned to the Lumpfish a curative 

 value, doubtless on the principle that, being ugly and uncanny, it 

 must have sanative qualities. According to Ekstrom and Smitt, in 

 the Danish Morko, "the few specimens that are caught are never 

 used as food. They are employed only as a remedy for ague. For 

 this purpose the fish is thoroughly dried in an oven and pounded to a 

 powder. The powder is then taken in corn-brandy, in doses of a 

 spoonful." Verily, the sick have been made to suffer among the 

 isfnorant ! 



