STURGEONS. 
155 
At a time wlien luxury had reached perhaps the greatest 
development it has ever attained, the Sturgeon is named as 
one of its principal objects; hut it has been thought strange 
that while the Common Sturgeon is often taken on the shores 
of Italy, the poet Ovid, as if unacquainted with it in Italy, 
should term it 
“The noble Sturgeon from a ddsiani sea.” 
Varro also informs us, (de Ke rustica, B. 2,) that the best^ of 
these fishes were caught near the Island of Rhodes, on which 
account, we are told, they were sometimes called the Rhodian 
Galei, or Dog-fishes; to which Clumella adds, (B. 8, C. 16,) 
that this favourite fish was not found anywhere else. On these 
accounts Cuvier drew the easy conclusion that our Common 
Sturgeon was not the species so highly valued by the noble 
epicures of Rome, but another species of the same family, the 
Sterlet, fA. ruthenusj which is stiR held in high reputation 
in some countries. 
But in Cuvier’s remark above referred to, as compared with 
Ovid’s verses, there is an obvious oversight which requires 
explanation. Not only does the Roman poet speak of the 
Acipenser in the terms we have given, hut in another portion 
of the same poem he shews that he distinguishes between the 
Rhodian fish and the true Acipenser, and that, too, by only 
a slight variation of the same words:— 
“Tuque peregTiiiis Acipenser nobilis undis... ^ 
Eb preciosus Holops nostris inoognitns undis. 
“The noble Sturgeon from a distant sea... ^ 
Enknown the precious Helops in our sea. 
A Dutch commentator has endeavoured to reconcile the 
apparent contradiction between the words applied to the 
Acipenser, and the fact of its not unfrequent occurrence m 
Italy, by supposing the poet to mean that this fish, as ob- 
tained in distant countries, was of better quality than such 
as were procured in his native land. 
But that this most highly- valued of the family of Sturgeons, 
(the Helops,) was the same with the fish knomi to the Greeks 
by the same name, (Elops, or Ellops,) we learn as well from 
riiny as from circumstances attending its captui'c as described 
by iElian, from which we find no difficulty in tracing the 
