SKATE. 463 



in considerable repute at inferior tables, as may be infer- 

 red from the cook-shops at Pompeii, where it occupies a 

 conspicuous place in the illustrated bill of fare, painted 

 on the walls, and was no doubt largely eaten, as it is to 

 this day in Naples, amongst a certain class of customers. 

 In Greece the head was considered a delicacy.* 



The liver of most of these fish is a great delicacy, and 

 is in fact the proper sauce for the ray itself; we regret 

 therefore that it is now so seldom to be met with. The 

 days are coming, we fear, when fish-liver wiU be as ex- 

 pensive as Perigord goose-liver, and only accessible to 

 the rich, who will then find out its merits. Already in 

 the country cods are so often sold amerced of this vis- 

 cus, as to have given origin to the notion in most ipland 

 places that they really never had a liver ; and now that 

 the experiment of extracting oil from the skate is coming 

 into fashion, we rustics seldom get a bit of it, even for 

 garnish. Verily, if chemists will persist in Heliogaba- 

 lizing fish at this rate, there will soon be no fish-livers 

 to eat. But the worst remains to be told. Skate oil, 

 excellent so long as it is incorporated in the liver, spoils 

 shortly after its removal. This fact will, we hope, soon 

 become more generally known : at present it is retailed 

 in inferior country drug-shops, where only cheap and 

 nasty medicines are kept, and is sold to the poor at about 

 half the price of cod oil, but is so rank, turbid, and of- 

 fensive, that even a ploughman's stomach cannot be 

 coaxed into bearing it. One phial only will sometimes 

 suflSce to induce such nausea as entirely to destroy any 

 little remains of appetite the patient may have enjoyed 

 before tasting it, and render his anorexia complete. 



The narke skate vary much in size ; those eaten at 

 Naples are about two feet and a half long, and one and 



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