SCOMBEEID^. 193 



to be owing to a glaucomatous or muddy condition of the 

 transparent humours of the eye ; otherSj that it proceeded 

 from an unfortunate habit of squinting acquired by the 

 young cordylas, and not corrected by the parents as 

 their offspring advanced to thunnyhood ; others, amongst 

 whom were Aristotle and Pliny, that the defective vision, 

 whatever might be its cause, was confined entirely to the 

 right eye. Aristotle. drew this inference from the conduct 

 of these fish, who were observed to enter the Euxine for 

 the purposes of spawning by the right bank ; but on re- 

 tirrning with their young brood in summer were noticed 

 as invariably to hug the opposite shore. Pliny, after 

 repeating Aristotle's report, endeavours to confirm it by 

 quoting a fiction as a fact : — [ There is,' says he, ' in the 

 Bosphorus an exceedingly white rock, which, reflecting 

 the rays of the sun on its surface, scares the thunny 

 from the spot ; the fish come so far in a direct course, 

 but no sooner arrive within view of this glittering 

 object,* than they start off abruptly, and rush tumul- 

 tuously into the Byzantine Bay ;' here, accordingly, the 

 thuimy fishery is exclusively carried on, nor was one 

 of these scombers, he says, ever known to visit the op- 

 posite shore of Chalcedon, though the coasts are only 

 a thousand paces apart.f Tournefort however declares 



an established fact ; to a-Kmov ojxjia Trapa^aXav 6vvvov hUrjv, liavmg 

 ' a cast in the left (not right) eye like a thunny," is a proverbial 

 expression from ^schylios. 



* This rock, called anciently the Golden Horn, was supposed to 

 derive the appellation in consequence of the wealth accruing to 

 the Byzantines from the great fishery carried on in the bay ; Gib- 

 bon says, ' The curve which it describes might be compared to the 

 horn of a stag, or, as it should seem with more propriety, to that 

 of an ox. . The epithet golden was expressive of the riches which 

 every wind wafted from the most distant countries into the secure 

 and capacious port of Constantinople.' 



t Chalcedon was said to be called ' the city of the blind,' be- 

 cause the Megarians, who planted a colony there, had bUndly 



K. 



