380 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



, as most pernicious to health at all seasons, but espe- 

 cially during the summer solstice :' and in their leonine 

 verses they go the length of declaring that to dine on 

 eels is a sure recipe for spoiling the voice : — 

 Vocibus anguillse praTse sunt si oomedantur, 

 Qui physice nou ignorant hoc testificantur.* 



We may here however suggest that possibly an indis- 

 creet use of this too luscious food, and not any bad 

 quality in the fish, deserved this blame: these good 

 men might have eaten to repletion, and then finding 

 themselves unable to chant melodiously their post-pran- 

 dial masses, have supposed the eels, and not themselves, 

 at fault. Neither meds. nor monks however would 

 have been wrong, had their censures been confined to 

 all foul-feeders of this species, which are certainly alike 

 unpalatable and unwholesome : a Tiber eel, for instance, 

 within the range of the city sewerage, is no 'bonne 

 bouche,^ and could never tempt even a monk to gluttony 

 and excess. Such a fish Juvenal sets before Virro's 

 humble and obsequious friend, and we hand him up 

 accordingly once more to poetic justice and to public 

 execration : — 



Now comes the dish for thy repast decreed, 

 A snake-like eel, of that unwholesome breed 

 "Which fattens where Cloaca's torrents pour, 

 And sports in Tiber's flood, his native shore ; 

 Or midst the drains that in Suburra flow. 

 Swims the fold streams, which fiU the crypts below. 



Such a situation, par parenthese, reminds us of a passage 

 from Dr. Mitchell's report, quoted by Yarrell, wherein 



* Probably these grey-beards had a passage of Pliny in their 

 mind ; but if so, they should, in justice to the eels, have quoted 

 it entire. ' Singular are they holden to bee for to cleanse the 

 humors, either cholerioke or phlegmaticke, hkewise to cure the 

 inftrmities of the spleene. Only they be hurtfull to the throat, 

 and make a man to lose his voice ; this is all the harme they do.' 



