362 PEOSE HALIEUTICS, 



it. In the first place^ in Juvenal's notice of his rhombus 

 occur the words ' erectas in terga sudes ;' now sudes (we 

 write for unlearned ears) is literally a stake^ or rigid 

 stick, and is so used in the Greorgics of Virgil ; applied 

 therefore to a fish, it must be to one whose fin-rays are 

 rigid and bristling when erect, somewhat after the man- 

 ner of stakes. Now such a poetic license may be ceded to 

 the back-fin of the turbot, the rays of which are stiff, but 

 it does not accord in any way with the brill, one of whose 

 distinctive characteristics (as separating it from the tur- 

 bot) is to carry a soft back-fin, the rays of which split 

 and divide into delicate threads at the top, as any one 

 may convince himself on next passing a fishmonger's, 

 where both species may be seen often confounded by 

 young housekeepers, lying on the same slab, and invit- 

 ing comparison. But besides this objection, as the an- 

 cients certainly had turbot as well as briU, and as the 

 turbot of Ancona are stUl famed throughout Italy, why 

 suppose Domitian's ' Adriaco mirandus litore rhombus' 

 was anything else ? So much then as regards this par- 

 ticular rhombus, for we do not mean to maintain that 

 under the same designation both brill and turbot might 

 not be included; how else, indeed, can we reconcile 

 Galen and Xenocrates, the former of whom recommends 

 plain boUed rhombus to invalids, as the flesh, he says, is 

 soft ; while the other declares the rhombus to be too firm 

 a fish to consume fresh, and advises keeping for some 

 days to make it tender ? Here, while the Greek physi- 

 cian clearly means brill, which is of much softer fibre, 

 the deipnosophist philosopher must be understood to 

 speak {eodem sub nomine) of turbot, which all the world 

 knows is tough enough fresh, and improves very much 

 by keeping. In other cases we are inclined to believe 

 that the briU had its distinctive appellation, like the tur- 

 bot, and that the passer associated by Horace with rhom- 

 bus, which is certainly a pleuronect, may have been it. 



