Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

I04THE DOLPHIN—ICHTHYOPHAGI—THE TUNNYPhaedimus states ": The Tunny is so sensible of the equinoxesand solstices that he teaches even men themselves withoutthe help of any astrological table." i Further, that being dimsighted, or as according to ^.schylus " casting a squint-eyelike a Tunny," the fish always coast the Euxine Sea on the right— side and contrariwise when they come forth " prudently"committing the care of their bodies to their best eye !Again, although the fish lack knowledge of arithmetic,they are yet so endowed that " they arrive in such a manner tothe perfection of that science," that for mutual love and protection" they always make up their whole fry into the form of acube and make a solid of the whole number consisting of sixequal planes, and swim in such order as to present an equalfront in each direction."" The Tunny more than any other fish delights in the heatof the sun.It will burrow for warmth in the sand in shallowwaters near the shore, or will, because it is warm, disport itselfon the surface of the sea." 2 With this pleasure inevitablysurgit aliquid amari, for about the risingof the Dog-star thisfish, as well as the sword fish, became the prey of a piercingparasite, which was nicknamed the " gadfly."The ordinary weights and sizes to which the Tunny attainedare uncertain. The passages in Arist., A^. H., VHI. 30, and inPliny, IX. 17, on account of the doubt whether the span of tailshould be two or five cubits are not authoritative. Richterrecords the capture in 1565 of a fish thirty-two feet long andsixteen feet thick, on whose skin a ship of war was depictedin its entirety.3The power of the skin to expand seems the only limitationof their size and weight, for they take on fat till they burst.'*No wonder that for beasts of such dimensions the Celtse usedgreat iron hooks,^ which elsewhere were double. ^ But their^ Plutarch, de Sol. Anim., ch. 29.» Arist., N. H.. VIII. 19.' Ichthyol., II. p. 376.* Pliny, N. H., IX. 20, on the say-so of Arist., N. H., VI. 16, " pinguescuntin tantum ut dehiscant."* lEMaxi, de nat. an., XIII. 16.* Oppian, hal.. III. 285.