CHAPTER XXXIX 
FISH WITH AND WITHOUT SCALES—METHODS 
OF FISHING—VIVARIA 
In Moses’ enumeration of what the tribesmen might or might 
not eat, there is a careful distinction by their names of the 
creatures in fur and feathers, but the fishes are merely divided 
(as were the animals entering the ark into “ clean and unclean,” 
Gen. vii.) into “all that have fins and scales ye shall eat: 
and whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye shall not eat; it 
is unclean unto you”’ (Deut. xiv. 9, Io). 
This classification has often been assumed to have been 
taken from the prohibitions enjoined by the Egyptian priest- 
hood, but without any authority, because we do not know 
what fish were actually ruled out by their dietary canon. 
Moses not only limits the use of fish as an article of food, as 
originally granted in the covenant with Noah (Gen. ix. 2, 3), 
but fails to discriminate between fish from the sea and else- 
where. He does, however, exclude all scaleless fish such as 
the important group of siluride, skates, lampreys, eels, and 
every variety of shell fish.! 
1 The classification, if unscientific and incorrect—e.g. Eels possess rudi- 
mentary scales—had as its practical purpose the elimination of the Stluride— 
t.e. the Catfish Clavias, Bagrus, Synodontis, etc.—which even if, as with the 
Catfish, pleasant to the taste were very unwholesome, causing diarrhea, 
rashes, etc. Doctors inform me that even in our day Jews who eat crustacea, 
especially lobsters, are far more liable to these diseases than Christians— 
presumably from an abstention of centuries. The ban on Eels from their 
infrequency in Palestine was almost superfluous, but on the Clarias, which 
abounds in and near the sea of Tiberias, very practical. The abstention, 
whether originating from supposed reasons of health or from some obscure 
tabu, was and still is prevalent in Asia, Africa, and South America. A curious 
trace of it at Rome is discoverable in Numa’s ordinance that in sacrificial 
offerings no scaleless fish, and no scarus should figure (Pliny, N. H., XXXII. ro). 
The abstention is sometimes merely partial, as with the Karayds in the 
Amazon valley, see W. A. Cook, op. cit., p. 96. 
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