88 
TUNNT. 
represented witli the head of a fish, as signifying their con 
nexion with the sea and fishing; the name of the city also 
having heen derived from the fishery there established. It is 
not difficult to suppose that when the importance of this fishery 
and the method of conducting it had extended to the Greeks, 
the name applied to the fish would also he received, and 
supplant any other, if such other had previously existed. 
The large examples of this fish already mentioned may be 
supposed to have attained a greater age than usually falls to 
the lot of this species, since there is no reason to give credit 
to an ancient opinion which affirmed that the life of a Tunny 
did not amount to more than a coujile of years. But these 
individuals, contrary to the habits of their race, are found to 
be solitary, which may arise from the circumstance that they 
have survived the instinctive influences of their sex; hut there 
are others, not nearly so large, which in their wanderings 
limit themselves to companies of three or four, and it is such 
chiefly that visit the British coasts, especially on the western 
borders of the Channel, in the summer and autumn, when 
their headlong eagerness often drives them into the floating 
nets, in which they become entangled, and where not unfre- 
quently they are held by the roughness of their teeth alone. 
They even reach the borders of Scotland, and have been taken 
at Gothenburg, in Sweden, in pursuit of herrings and other 
fishes of similar size and habits; but I have not been informed 
of their taking a bait with us, although where they are more 
abundant the fishermen obtain success Avith even a clumsy 
imitation of living fish, of which the Sardine, Flying Fish, and 
Mackarel are the most successful. 
It is believed that this fish is listless in the winter, and 
does not Avander away from the district it happens to be in 
when that season overtakes it; but in spring it revives, and 
multitudes then gather together in the Atlantic, and press 
towards the coast of Spain, from which they pass through the 
Straits of Gibraltar in their journey towards the Black Sea, 
in which alone it was the ancient although erroneous belief 
that they chose to deposit their spawn. This proceeding forms 
a regular system of migration, and is conducted in well-ordered 
columns, in which the strongest and most rapid take the lead, 
while the rest are content to folloAV their leaders along the 
