404 plint's NATTTEAI, HISTOBT. [Book IX. 



would have been paid for it by our epicures, if it had only been 

 found off the shores in the vicinity of our city ! 



CHAP. 32. THAT THE SAME ZINDS ARE NOT ETEKTWHEKE 



EaUALI/T ESTEEMED. 



There is this also in the nature of fish, that some are more 

 highly esteemed in one place, and some in another ; such, for 

 instance, as the coracinus" in Egypt, the zeus,'^ also called the 

 faber,^ at Gades, the salpa,'^ in the vicinity of Ebusus,^^ which 

 is considered elsewhere an unclean fish, and can nowhere*' be 

 thoroughly cooked, wherever found, without being first beaten 

 with a stick : in Aquitania, again, the river sahnon'' is pre- 

 ferred to aU the fish that swim in the sea. 



larger than ours, it is never found at all approaching the weight here men- 

 tioned. 



^1 The holty of the modem Egyptians, as pre-riously mentioned. 



3' Or Jove-fish. Cuvier says that GiUius has applied the name of 

 " faber " to the dory, or fish of Saint Peter, and has stated that the Dal- 

 matians, who call it the " forga," pretend that they can find in its bones all 

 the instruments of a forge. After him, other modem naturalists have called 

 the same fish Zeus faber ; but nothing, Cuvier says, goes to prove that the 

 dory is the fish so called by the ancients. The epithet even of " rare," 

 given to it by Ovid, Halieut. 1. 112, is far from applicable to the dory, 

 which is common enough in the Mediterranean. If, indeed, the xaX.KEwe 

 of the Greeks were the same as the " faber," as, indeed, we have reason to 

 suppose, it would be something in favour of the dory, as Athenseus, B. vii., 

 says that the xa^tfwe is of a round shape : hut then, on the other hand, 

 Oppian, Halieut. B. v. 1. 135, ranks it among the rock-fish which feed near 

 rocks with herbage on them ; while the dory is found only in the deep sea. 



33 Or " blacksmith." 



3' Cuvier says that this fish has still the same name in Italy ; that it is 

 called the "saupe" in Provence, and the "vergadelle" in Languedoc, being 

 the Sparus salpa of Linneeus ; and that it still answers to all the ancient 

 characteristics of the salpa, eating grass and filling its stomach, and having 

 numerous red lines upon the body. It is common, and bad eating, but is 

 no better at Ivica, the ancient Ebusus, than anywhere else. M. De la 

 Eoche, when describing the fishes of that island, says expressly that the 

 flesh of the saupe is but very little esteemed there. Ovid, Halieut. 1. 122, 

 speaks of it as " deservedly held in little esteem." 



35 See B. iii. c. 11. 



■™ Neither at Ebusus nor anywhere else. 



3' Hardouiu remarks, that Pliny and Ausonius are the only Latin writers 

 that mention this fish ; while not one among the Greeks speaks of it. It 

 was probably a native of regions too far to the north for them to know 

 much about it. In this country it holds the same rank that the scaxus and 

 the mullet seem to have held at the Eoman tables. 



