MTTRiENID-iE. 369 



des poissons sarts ecailleSj ne s'abstiendraient point d'un 

 aliment si fin s'ils cultivaient I'histoire naturelle avec 

 autant d'ardeiir qu'ils mettent d'aveuglement dans un 

 precepte qui n'etait reellement pas compris dans le sens 

 de la loi.' But whence Scotchmen derive their antipa,thy 

 it would perhaps be less easy to determine. With these 

 few exceptions., the world generally, from the time of 

 Aristotle to the present day, has agreed in hearing un- 

 qualified testimony to the merits of this ubiquitous fa- 

 vourite ; and amidst the fickleness of fashion, the end- 

 less caprices of taste, and the many and various reforms 

 of the culinary code, man's constancy to this creature 

 has truly been remarkable. 



Worshiped in Egypt, and made the belly-god of Gre- 

 cian and Roman voluptuaries, they became in later days, 

 even when stripped of divine pretensions, the ' pesci no- 

 bili' of Italy, and the ' adel,' i. e. the noble — subaudi fish, 

 — (corrupted first into aal, and then eel) of our Saxon 

 ancestors. Egyptian eels being highly esteemed by epi- 

 cures, not all the divine honours paid to the race by the 

 sons of Ham could preserve them from the jaws of glut- 

 tonous Greece. ' Your idol is my idol too,' said Anti- 

 phanes, a Greek gourmet, ' but in a difierent way ; you 

 Egyptians worship the eel as a deity, I adore him in a 

 dish I' ' The Egyptians are right in revering eels above 

 their divinities,' observed another banteringly ; ' for these 

 must be won over by prayers and vows, while with enough 

 drachmae in hand any one may make sure of an eel.' ' If 

 I prefer any stranger to you, my love,' says a wheedling 

 Thais to her paramour, ' may I be turned into an eel, with 

 Callimedon by my side to devour me.' Thus, high as 

 eels stood in public estimation in Greece, we need not 

 wonder that the practical question, as to where the best 

 were engendered, was eagerly discussed, nor that there 

 should have been as many rival provinces candidates for 

 the distinction as there were cities to compete for the 



