[584] For ἔρμα, “support,” perhaps we should read ἔρυμα, “protection,” i.e. against erosion.
[585] See Forest and Stream, Nov. 7, 1914.
[586] The shark finds great favour among the negroes; “you can swallow him in de dark,” is a commendation based on the absence of small tricky bones, such as the shad’s. But to the best black gourmets, the fish only attains its highest perfection in soup, after being buried for two weeks! The cook of the friend with whom I was staying in Jamaica only consented to cutting up my shark, on condition that if a gold watch was found in its belly, that was to be her perquisite—a condition postulated, I eventually discovered, because on a similar occasion one hundred years before, her grandmother did discover a gold watch. Alas for her! two ship-bolts of iron were her only treasure-trove.
[587] N. H., VI. 13.
[588] De Anim., VIII. 3, p. 262.
[589] Theodore Gill, “The Remarkable Story of a Greek Fish,” Washington Univ. Bull., Jan. 1907, pp 5-15.
[590] N. H., VI. 13.
[591] XIV. 8.
[592] Hal., IV. 450 ff.
[593] “Bobbing for eels,” with a bunch of worms on worsted is of like principle, but lacks the pneumatic touch. The eels seem to get their teeth caught in the worsted, and are pulled out before they can let go. See antea, p. 42, for the garfish of the Solomon Islands being caught from a kite by a hookless spider’s web.