TUNNY. 
93 
oosely enough, omitting knocking them on the head with 
spars and fragments of wreck. It is curious enough that our 
s ermen do not employ the tuck-sean in the scan fishery for 
, — a kindred fish to the Tunny, — and that too, although 
Gre are proofs of their losing a large proportion of what 
^ cy enclose, from the absence of another net. It would be 
improvement to shoot a second net outside the first, with 
Its joining opposite the bend of the former. The inner net, 
thus first shot, would be used as a tuck-net. 
The following is also from the same writer: — ‘Tn a very 
learned and curious work, ‘Textrinum Antiquorum, or an 
Account of the Art of Weaving among the Ancients,’ by Mr. 
James Yates, M.A., of which only two hundred and fifty 
copied have been printed, I find an historical notice of the 
sean. The two kinds of fishing-nets in common use among 
the Greeks were the Afj,<f)t/3\r]crTpov and the ^ayrjvrj. The 
etymology of the former word clearly indicates the casting-net j 
but etymology affording no clue to the sort of net intended 
by the latter we must have recourse to the passages where it 
occurs for a clear view of its meaning. In Alciphron, Epist. 
ij 17, mention is made of persons who are fishing in a bay for 
Tunnies, and enclose nearly the whole bay with their Xayrjvr) 
' ®oan, expecting to catch a great abundance. Lucian speaks 
oi aaj'ijvf) 0uvvev^iK-r) — a Tunny sean. The Septuagint trans- 
lation of a passage in Ilabakkuk, chapter i, 15, is EiyKeva-ev 
avTov ev afjLi^ilSki^CTpa), km aivyyayev avrov ev tm<; aayr]VM<i, which, 
instead of our common version, more literally is — ‘He (the 
Chaldean) hath drawn him in a casting-net, and gathered him 
m the seans.’ That the sean was used by the Greeks, as 
ii'ith us, to encompass a great extent of water, is shewn by 
the various uses of the word aayrjvrj in a figurative sense, (of 
i^bich several instances are given, as well by ordinary as sacred 
Writers.) The Greek word having been adopted under the 
form sagena in the Latin vulgate, this was changed into segne 
by the Anglo-Saxons, and we, their descendants, have still 
further abridged it into sean. In the south of England this 
^ord is also pronounced and spelt seine, as it is in French. 
^ e find in Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History” a curious passage 
*111 the introduction of this kind of net into England. He 
®ays, the people had as yet only learnt to catch eels with nets. 
