BASS. 
191 
north in Scotland. Belon says he found it in the Eed Sea. 
(Observations, etc., L. 2 , c. 67.) 
The Bass is in esteem for the table with us; but it was 
regarded much more highly, and as among the principal of 
their dainties, by the luxurious* Eomans of the Empire; who 
chose to set the highest value on such as were caught in a 
recognised district of the Tiber*, and which those who prided 
themselves on their exrjuisite taste professed to be easily able 
to recognise. Bliny only says that they were the best which 
were caught in rivers; but from Horace we learn that they 
must be of small size, and taken precisely between the two 
bridges of the city, neither above nor far below. (Satires, 
b. 2 s. 2 , where it is to be observed that the translators into 
English have chosen to render the word Lupus by the English 
word Pike, to which fish the Lupus does not answer in any 
particular.) The favoured fish was known by its pale colour, 
and especially by its white and woolly flesh; and a story is 
handed down to us by Columella, of the affected horror ex- 
pressed by one of these fashionable sensualists at a table, where 
it happened that a Bass not of the right sort was set before 
him. Having taken a portion into his mouth, he threw it back 
in apparent disgust, and exclaimed, “1 thought it was fish 
you had set before me.” But their ancestors could not have 
been so fastidious; for Columella, (de re rustica, b. 8, c. 16,) 
tells us, that from ancient times these fish had been kept in 
fresh-water ponds, where they bred freely. 
Yet it was the fish preferred by the epicure that ought to 
have excited disgust; for the fiivoui'ite station was indebted for 
its excellency to the great cloaca, or principal drain of the city; 
and as Willoughby observes, it was owing to their being fed 
with matters that were discharged from it, that they had ob- 
tained the colour and taste which elevated them into reputation. 
A similar observation has been made in modem times. 
' Willoughby, and other writers who had seen this fish chiefly 
in Italy, "describe the young as marked with dark spots, which 
disappear in advanced growth; and Gesner’s figure shews it 
similarly spotted; but no such marks appear in them in our 
own country. The adult fish reach a considerable bulk; but 
one of fifteen pounds is considered large. Yet I have been 
informed of several that weighed twenty pounds, and one has 
