, P L A T E XII. 
deemed a prodigious rarity, and fetched a price truly enormous : six 
thousand pieces, a sesterce for each pound. Callidore is reproached 
for having paid twelve hundred sesterces for four Surmullets to put 
into a Angle dish of soup. Pliny says, Asinius Celer gave eight 
thousand nummi * for one ; and Suetonius afterwards bought three 
of the same fishes for 30,000 sesterces. The delicacy of its flesh 
was not the only incitement to pay such excessive prices ; they had 
also a high degree of pleasure in watching the changes of its vivid 
colours while it lay expiring, and at their sumptuous feasts, the 
Mullets were brought from a vessel under the table in which they 
were kept alive, and put into transparent vases for that purpose. 
Seneca says it was worth, nothing unless it died in the hands of the 
guests. 
It is usually about a foot in length : the colour the finest red, 
whitish on the belly, and striped with vellow. It feeds on other 
fishes. Crabs, See. and approaches the shores in spring to deposit%hc 
spawn. Our specimen has in the first dorsal fin seven rays, in th* 
second nine : fixteen rays in the pectoral fin : seven in the ventral 
fin ; eight in the anal fin, and twenty in the tail. 
« £■ 64. Its. 8d. 
