196 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



Vext with tlie puny foe the tliunnies leap, 

 Flotmce on the stream, and toss the mantling deep, 

 Eide o'er the foaming seas, with torture rave. 

 Bound into air, and dash the smoking wave. 

 Oft with imprudent haste they fly the main 

 And seek in death a kind release from pain. 

 Vault on some ship, or to the shores repair. 

 And gasp away their hated lives in air * 

 Not Orestes pursued by the Furies, nor the lowing fly- 

 stung lo in ancient tragedy, nor Philoctetes otottotoiing 

 over his foot, nor the knot of frantic galeux blouses who 

 on the periodic reception-day force the doors of the H6- 

 pital St. Louis, and rush in unbidden in poisoned shirts 

 to stamp like demoniacs, sacre the doctors, and claim, in 

 right of ' gale k grosses bulles,' instant immersion into 

 lustral waters and six aromatic fumigations, ever exhi- 

 bited a wilder state of excitement than thunny maddened 

 by the burning stings of these marine gadflies ! In the 

 lunges of intense cutaneous suflfering he loses command 

 of the little brains he once possessed, and rushing head- 

 long through the deep either leaps frantically on the deck 

 of some passing vessel, or, lashed as by scourges, dashes 

 himself in pieces on the rocks, where the corpse is found 

 with a host of these cruel tormentors still at work upon 

 his now senseless flesh. 



The most important fisheries of the ancients were car- 

 ried on at Byzantium and on the coasts of Spain, points 

 where the Mediterranean by contracting its channel ne- 

 cessarily brings more fish into proximity with the shore. 

 The rising of the Pleiades (May 11th) was the signal for 

 the commencement of these piscatory operations, which 

 were carried on tiU the setting of Arcturus (August 6) . 

 The modern season lasts considerably longer ; beginning, 

 according to Duhamel, early in April, and not termina- 

 ting tin quite the end of September; that month being 



* John Jones, trans. 0pp. 



