270 PEOSE HALIEITTICS. 



tresses, 'qui sont plus sedentaires que les autres dames/* 

 and therefore have plenty of time to devote to them. 



A frittura of gold-fish has not, that we are aware, 

 been attempted even in Italy ; they would no doubt be 

 as insipid as other small carp, and so the mediocrity 

 of their flesh protects them in spite of the golden scales 

 which invest it. 



Cyprinus Barbatus (Barbel) .f 



Of the barbels of ancient Greece no records are ex- 

 tant ; in modem Greece they are, or were in Belongs 

 day, known as ' musticata,' a calling obviously derived 

 from fiva-Ta^, mustax, which in Theocritus means 'beard 

 on the upper lip^ (hence moustache), and applied to bar- 

 bel, the fish with the moustache. The old Latin name 

 barbus, employed by Ausonius, as well as aU its present 

 European designations, point to the same pecidiarity, 

 viz. a beard of barbels hanging from the superior jaw. 



This is a widely distributed fish, which thrives in some 

 situations especially, and continues to multiply in spite 

 of every destructive engine employed against it. Alberti 

 says that from ten to twelve waggon-loads are annually 

 taken out of the Danube during the autumnal equinox 

 by the hand alone. 'In some localities favourable to 

 their growth, barbel will reach a length of ten feet.' J 

 These must be very old fish, which according to Auso- 

 nius renders them more acceptable at table : 



Tu melior pejore ssvo. 



The Insubrians, however, say no barbel is fit for 

 food : — 



* Lao^pede. 



t The barbel forms, on ' Coat of Bar,' one of the four quarter- 

 ings of Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI. (Yarrell), so that 

 a sort of historic interest attacbes to tbis fisb. 



J Cuvier. 



