ESOCIDiE OR PIKES. 309 



from Suabia, and sent to that great mart of European 

 luxury and national dep6t of half the 'friandise' of 

 France — the venerable city of Strasbourg, whence the 

 markets of the metropolis were for a season duly sup- 

 plied. Of late howererj either owing to the fickleness 

 of French taste, or to the fish haying deteriorated, the 

 practice has been given up, and the glanis is now never 

 seen at restaurants, tables-d^hote, or magasins de co- 

 mestibles. The ancient world does not appear to have 

 thought so highly of its merits as the modern, if indeed 

 the proverb, ' a stinking'' sUurus in a silver platter^ (=a 

 gold ring in a sow's snout) be really referable to the 

 present species. As, however, the word silurus was 

 employed very loosely by Latin writers to designate a 

 variety of other fish, both large and small, and was 

 sometimes restricted to a well-known worthless piscicu- 

 lus,* perhaps the adage refers to this individual. Be- 

 sides the above, and several other sUuri of which, as un- 

 known to the ancients, we forbear to speak, there is yet 

 another species, a Brazilian fish, whose propensities are 

 so singular as to demand notice, though they can only 

 be given in the tongue in which Spix and Martins re- 

 cord them : — ' Singulari instinctu incitatur in ostia ex- 

 cretoria corporis humani intrandi, quae cum igitur in iis 

 qui flumine lavant, attingit, summa cum violentia in- 



* To this, and not to tlie Suabian delicacy, Juvenal alludes in 

 his well-known strictures against an itinerant fish-dealer who had 

 risen from hawking about other people's sUuri, to become a pur- 

 chaser of mullet on his own account. No shoulders but those of 

 Atlas could have borne the weight of one ' silurus glanis,' much 

 less have carried about, as he did, numbers in a basket — ' vendere 

 municipes fracta de merce siluros.' 



A fish like this, one single foot to raise. 



Would take twelve men of our degenerate days ; 



A brace of heroes from the Trojan war 



United scarce might lift it on the car. 



Matron, parod. 



