to2 THE DOLPHIN—ICHTHYOPHAGI—THE TUNNY 
ladders still used in Austria and Italy (of which Keller gives 
an illustration 1) and the Turkish dalian of the Bosporus repre- 
sent the modern scaffold. Oppian (hal., III. 630 ff.) and #lian 
(de nat. an., XV. 5) note the enormous hauls made by the fisher- 
men when “ the army ” of the Tunnies set out on its migrations, 
company by company. 
The nets used for the capture of Tunny by the Italians 
(at the present day) are fixed: made of thick cord, without 
leads, and sometimes as much as 250 fathoms long, and 15 
fathoms deep, thus recalling Oppian’s ‘‘a Town of Nets.” ? 
Special regard has to be paid now as of old, in fixing their 
position, to the course frequented by this eminently migratory 
genus in its annual passage from the Atlantic to the Black 
Sea and Sea of Azov, a distance of 2800 miles and back again. 
The same route is always travelled by an ever living stream of 
undiminished fulness, furnishing food to millions on the 
Mediterranean. 
To the Pheenicians and to the Spaniards of old the Tunny 
ranked high as a commercial asset. The Tyrian tunny was 
specially prized?; its salsamentum travelled far and wide. 
Rhode (p. 38) points out, however, that this originally was 
designed not as a delicacy, but as a preventive against scurvy 
and other diseases attendant on the long voyages which the 
far-flung commerce of the Phoenicians demanded. 
The older port, Sidon, got its name from its wealth of fish, 
which in Phcenician was called Sidon,4 while Tyrus, one of the 
earliest inhabitants of the younger port, traditionally invented 
fishing tackle. Many Spanish towns, as their coins attest, 
notably those of Gades and Carteia, owed much of their 
prosperity, if not their existence, to the salt or pickled fish 
10. Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt, vol. ii. 388, fig. 122. This work 
(published at Leipzig a year before the War) unfortunately came into my hands 
only when I had practically finished my book, and thus I have been precluded 
from the more copious use of the Fische portion, which I should have desired 
and which it would certainly have demanded. The seventy pages dealing 
with fish form a compact treasure-house of ichthyic literature, but owing 
perhaps to their scope lack piscatorial interest. 
2 Faber, Fisheries in the Adriatic, London, 1883. 
3 According to Pollux, VI. 63. 
4 Justin, XVIII. 3, 2. 
> Cf, Ezekiel, XXVI. 5, 14. 
