The Egyptians venerated this fish, and always esteemed it sacred.[XXI_72] Among the Sybarites, just appreciators of its culinary qualities, the fishers and sellers of sea-eels were exempt from all taxes.[XXI_73] They often procured some of such enormous size, that we should be tempted to accuse the old chroniclers of exaggeration, if we were not aware that this animal attains considerable dimensions. In the year 1786 a sea-eel was taken in the Elbe, weighing sixty pounds. This extraordinary fish measured seven feet two inches in length, and twenty-five inches in the girth.[XXI_74]
LAMPREY.
In spite of its soft and viscid flesh, this fish occupied in Rome a most honourable rank among the multitudinous dishes which intemperance was ever augmenting, and preference was given to that species caught by enterprising speculators in that strait which separates Sicily from Italy. These good people averred that lampreys which rise to the surface of the sea are immediately dried up by the sun, and cannot any more descend to the depths of the ocean.[XXI_75] This little story did no harm to their sale; on the contrary, they became on that account more curiously interesting.
It was also said, and the serious Gesner himself has repeated this fable:[XXI_76] That if the fish fastens its mouth to the side of a vessel it immediately stops, and that the combined power of the wind and the efforts of the rowers are unavailing.[XXI_77] The fact is that, by means of a kind of suction, it can fasten firmly on any bodies; and one weighing only three pounds has been seen to sustain in the air, with its mouth, a stone weighing twelve pounds.[XXI_78]
The lamprey has not always been the fashion, but it has had brilliant and glorious epochs. In 1135 it caused so great a fit of indigestion to Henry I., King of England, that that prince died in consequence of it.[XXI_79] Since then, in the 16th century, it has been honoured with the reputation of having caused more than one death.[XXI_80] It was sold at a very high price, £3 at least, and at certain periods the Roman nobles even paid as much as £20 for one of these fish.[XXI_81] The ancient metropolis of the world had sometimes strange reminiscences of her former grandeur.
The Italian epicures of that remarkable era used to kill the lamprey in Candian wine. A nutmeg was placed in the mouth, and a clove in each of the openings of the gills. They rolled them round in a saucepan, and after adding crushed almonds, bread crumbs, Candian wine, and spices, the whole was cooked over a slow fire.[XXI_82]
SEA-WOLF.
Hicesius, one of the most estimable ichthyophagists of antiquity, does not hesitate to place the sea-wolf above all the fish which by their excellence were dear to Greece;[XXI_83] and the great Archestratus says, that the lubridan (a species of the sea-wolf) is a child of the gods.[XXI_84]