SCOMBERID^. , 205 



Those which are carried about the streets of Sicilian 

 towns in the dog-days, upon poles, and disposed of with 

 tuck of drum, are food scarcely to be borne, beiag, as 

 Pliny says (will the reader forgive his vigorous expres- 

 sion? ) ' enow to make a man belche sowre.' ^They attain 

 occasionally very great dimensions : those weighing a 

 hundred pounds are called ' scampirro' (a patois diminu- 

 tive in Sicily for scomber) ; the ' mezzo tunno,' or half 

 thunny, ranges from a hundred to three hundred pounds: 

 Cetti says, a thousand pounds is no uncommon size, and 

 that specimens have been caught of eighteen hundred 

 pounds weight. Aristotle mentions one of twelve hun- 

 dred pounds, the tail of which measured two cubits and 

 a pabn across ; and Pennant, only a century ago, relates 

 the capture of a thunny off the coast of Inverary, which, 

 after filling his obese skin with herrings, weighed six 

 hundred and forty pounds. This, par parenfMse, takes 

 away Churchill's reproach of Scotland, that everything, 

 even to the insects, grows thin there. 



And half-starved spiders feed on half-starved flies : 

 fish at least do not; thunnies and whales increase in 

 corpulency off its coasts, and the fattest herrings in the 

 world are those from Lochfine and its neighbourhood. 



One of the largest, if not the very largest, thunny ever 

 heard of, is that of which Aldrovandi gives full parti- 

 culars, as he received them from a high functionary of 

 Spain : this real cete of a scomber measured thirty-two 

 feet lengthways, and had at the broadest part a girth of 

 sixteen feet ; facts which, as they rest upon Spanish, not 

 on Greek veracity, it would be highly improper to ques- 

 tion: there could also be no doubt that this fish was a 

 thunny, for it had been pickled, and as the relator truly 

 says, there can be no mistake in the flavour and fibre of 

 that chip-like melandrian food.* 



* A sketch of this thunny, sent to the Italian naturalist, is 



