[623] There is in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington an excellent collection of specimens, illustrative of the development of the Eel.
[624] Any apparent resemblance in this list, or in this book, to Badham’s book is easily accounted for by the fact that both derive much from the same source, he without any, I with due acknowledgment to the little known volume by Nonnius (Antwerp, 1616), which itself draws largely from Athenæus, Xenocrates, etc. The sequence of sentences, turns of expression, choice of epithets in Badham sometimes so strongly suggest Nonnius, that it is a case of yet another miracle of unconscious absorption—from a rare book written in Latin 238 years previously!—or of—well, Ælianism. I hesitated for a long time from even hinting such unacknowledged extraction by an author to whom two generations have owed much pleasure and more knowledge. Were it not for the inadequacy of his references and for his bursting, Wegg-like, into poetry, which doubles the length and sometimes obscures the sense of the original Greek or Latin, Badham would be delightful reading.
[625] Bk. IX. 29.
[626] Cf. Blakey, op. cit., p. 73.
[627] N. H., XXXII. 5.
[628] In Krause, op. cit., 237, Loki, originally god of Fire, changes into a salmon from his predilection for the red colour of the fish! The Icelandic Eddas attribute the invention of the Net to Loki.
[629] Var. epist., III. 48.
[630] Op. cit., p. 93.
[631] Matron, Ἀττικὸν δεῖπνον, 27 ff.; ap. Athen. IV. 13.
[632] Cf. Seneca, Nat. Quæst., III. 18. Also Pliny, N. H., IX. 30.