354 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



means concurs in this opinion.* The testimony of Eng- 

 lish authors against the'wholesomeness of the haddock 

 is not accredited, and the statement of a single Greek 

 gourmet, opposed as it is to those of most of his coun- 

 trymen, is prohably as little worthy of credit. Idiosyn- 

 crasies ia taste go for nothing here : some persons of 

 vitiated palates hribe their tongues occasionally to dis- 

 parage turtle, and to profess mutton preferable to veni- 

 son ; here at least, if not elsewhere, public opinion may 

 be safely taken in preference to private judgment.f 



The hake (unlike Aristotle's &09, which is a solitaire) 

 goes about in great bodies, and is eminently gregarious ; 

 he is a very greedy fish, and as fond of pouching pilchards 

 as the cod is of lining his inside with him : one merlu- 

 cius will get through a dozen of these clupeans in a very 

 short time ; nor, like other fish with sharp teeth, is he 

 scrupulous against whom he whets them, and we must 

 report, to the discredit of the Neapolitan hakes, that of 

 the quantities we used to inspect in the daily fish-mar- 

 ket, by far the majority exhibited the tail or half the 

 body of some young codling (generally a brother hake) 

 projecting from the mouth, the head and shoulders of 

 which they had already digested. The Mediterranean 

 abounds in hake, and it is equally common in the north. 

 No country is better off for merlucian supplies than our 

 own; forty thousand in one day have been landed on 

 the shores of Mount Bay in Cornwall : the quantity 

 taken off various parts of the Irish coast is also immense : 

 indeed they may be said almost to encircle the Emerald 



* Soii(pfiv Sf Tpefjjei Tiva adpua, KoXXcbj ovx r)heiav e'juoi. 



t Besides the more usual culinary methods had recourse to in 

 preparing the haddock for the table, the Poles, Germans, and 

 Belgians are in the habit of seasoning it with turmeric, which is 

 said to communicate both a flavour and an agreeable colour to the 

 flesh. The pleasantest way of dressing haddock is, we think, in 

 curry. 



