Class IV. SHAD HERRING. 461 



all he tells us is, that it was a very bad 

 fish: 



Stridentesque focis olsonia plebis Alausas. 



A/ausce crackling on the embers are 

 Of wretched poverty th' insipid fare. 



But commentators have agreed to render the 

 Ggiara-a. of the first, and the Alausa of the last, by 

 the word Shad. Perhaps they were directed by 

 the authority of Strabo, who mentions the Q^a-a-a 

 the supposed Shad, and the K.e<rr§evs, or Mullet, 

 as fishes that ascend the Nile at certain seasons, 

 which, with the Dolphin * of that river, he says, 

 are the only kinds that venture up from the sea 

 for fear of the crocodile. That the two first 

 are fishes of passage in the Nile, is confirmed 

 to us by Belonius, f and by Hasselquist.% The 

 last says that the Shad is found in the Medi- 

 terranean near Smyrna, and on the coast of 

 Egypt, near Rosetto ; and that in the months 

 December and January it ascends the Nile, as 

 high as Cairo : that it is stuffed with pot mar- 



* This is the Dolphin of the Nile, a fish now unknown to us. 

 Pliny lib. viii. c. 25. says, it had a sharp fin on its back, with 

 which it destroyed the crocodile, by thrusting it into the belly of 

 that animal, the only penetrable place. 



f Belon. Itin. 98. 



% P- 385. 388. Suedish edition, p. 226. English edition. 



