SCOMBEEID^. 183 



mere height^ we are free to confess, has never quite satis- 

 fied our moral sense as a legitimate ground for putting 

 one man before another, even in war, unless as a mere 

 machine,* since many historical heroes (like our own 

 last and greatest), and unHke those of epic and romance, 

 have been notoriously short ; yet among fish we certainly 

 do think that girth, length, and weight should have 

 precedency ; in place of which, the dwarf in the mack- 

 erel family comes first, and is the titular representative 

 of the rest ; scomber thynnus, scomber pelamys, scom- 

 ber alalonga, scomber ductor, scomber xiphias, etc., be- 

 ing all derived from scomber scomber, the name of that 

 familiar zebra-backed acquaintance of our markets, the 

 common mackerel, whom we eat periodically with fen- 

 nel or gooseberry sauce, and who alone, of all the finny 

 tribe, claims the privilege of being hawked about the 

 streets on a Sunday. In our present notice we shall in- 

 vert the usual ichthyological order, and speak first of 

 the most important of all Mediterranean fish, the scom- 

 ber thynnus, or thunny. 



Thunny, ob the Fish of Many Names. 



All the world knows the difficulty of backing out of a 

 bad name. Unlike one of Monsieur Vieuxbois's shirts 

 or Mahomet's mistresses, it is not to be lightly changed: 

 and an iU-hamed dog slips out of the unenviable posses- 



a useful lesson to giants generally, who were too prone to defy the 



gods; ^ ^ _ ^ 



A\X avopa XPV Kav awfia yevvrjo-f) jxeya, 



doKelv 7re(T€Lj/. 



* ' For thus the ram that batters down the wall, 

 For the great swing and rudeness of his poise. 

 Men place before the head that made the engine. 

 Or those that with the fineness of their souls 

 By reason guide his execution.' — Shakspeare. 



