THE EUROPEAN SEAS. 



205 



upwards from the Mediterranean in the spring. 

 The value and importance of this fish to the 

 Byzantines (for it is the Tunny which fills their 

 "Golden Horn" to overflowing) have caused its , 

 habits to be closely observed from early times ; 

 from these notices we find that its route is the same 

 now as then, and that it still continues to fill the 

 bay of Constantinople with its countless shoals with 

 the same periodic regularity as it did 2000 years 

 ago. The old Mediterranean Greeks thought that 

 Byzantium was the home of the Tunnies ; the present 

 race of fishers know much better. This annual 

 passage into the Black Sea and back again, is only 

 the last stage of that long migration which the 

 Tunnies have to perform. They are all Atlantic 

 fishes, and rather Lusitanian than Celtic, though 

 some few reach our coasts. They make their ap- 

 pearance about the Straits of Gibraltar and in 

 the Western Mediterranean in the early spring, and 

 travel steadily eastwards. From the circumstance 

 that the fish taken about the islands of Corsica and 

 Sardinia are remarkable for their size as compared 

 with those which compose the shoals which follow 

 the shores of Europe on one hand and those 

 of Africa on the other, it is a part of the popular 

 belief respecting the Tunnies that they move along 

 the Mediterranean in three columns, of which the 

 middle one consists of the oldest and strongest fishes. 



The passage of these shoals along the coasts of 

 southern Europe is a busy time, and one of gene- 



