fish offering. Of the common plaice fish (platessa vulgaris), though unlike every other member of the finny tribe, he presents a lozenge ready for quartering, the annals of English heraldry make no mention, and that indefatigable antiquarian Mr. Moule has been obliged accordingly to refer his readers to a Danish family hight Bukens, who have adopted in their armorial bearings, three platessue (naiant) on an argent bend, in an azure field. Having given this fish his brevet rank, we have but little to say about him. He was unknown to the ancients, not being

FLOUNDER

The flounder, though mentioned complacently by Pope in conjunction with the gudgeon as what his Thames affords,' and though (and perhaps in consequence of this predilection of the poet) Thames flesi enjoy a sort of cockney reputation of their own, a poorer fish, except plaice, (for what food is more flat than a flounder) it would not be easy to name. The inhabitants of Friesland, however, think otherwise, and have been at the trouble of naturalizing them in their fish ponds. The flounders, too, about Memel on the Baltic, like our own Thames bred, are held in particular esteem by the inhabitants of the locality; but Catalani's mot of an inferior cantatrice, that she might be the best of her kind, but that her kind was none of the best, is no doubt applicable to every variety of this poor pisciculus, whom it is far better entertainment to fish for than to be compelled to eat. As soon as it is dawn he prowls about for his breakfast, and this is therefore the best time to take him:

He that intends a flounder to surprise, Must off betimes and bob before sunrise.

He has also qualities invaluable in the angler's eye, being greedy, playful, and full of pluck. This fish,' writes Franks in his Northern Memoirs, is bold as a buccanier, of much more confidence than caution, and is so fond of a worm that he will go to the banquet, though he die at the board. He is endowed with great resolution, and struggles stoutly for the victory when hooked; he is also more than ordinarily difficult to deal with by reason of his build, which is altogether flat, as it

a Mediterranean species. His bright orange spots have procured him some partisans, particularly on the Sussex coast, where these brilliant parallelograms have obtained them the name of diamond plaice; large specimens reach occasionally as much as from ten to twelve pounds; they are generally however both held and sold very cheap, a dozen, weighing thirty pounds, sometimes fetching but a very few pence. The French, who occasionally salt them, call them carrelet, we presume from the little coloured squares on their upper surface.

OR FLUKE.

were a level. He delights, I must further tell you, to dwell among stones; besides he is a great admirer of deeps and ruinous decays, yet as fond as any fish of moderate streams; and none beyond him, except the perch, that is more solicitous to rifle into ruins, insomuch that a man would fancy him an antiquary, considering he is so affected with reliques. In heraldry, sable a fluke argent is the armorial bearings of a family of the name of Fisher; and the crest of the Butts of Dorking is an arm couped at the elbow and erect, grasping a butt fish or flounder. These fish, like some other pleuronects, are often reversed-i.e., have eyes (other flounders being the standard) on the wrong side of the head; specimens also occur presenting other anomalies, shewing sometimes both sides coloured alike, at others both equally colourless. Northern seas furnish another fish belonging to the present subgenus, the platessa limanda, or dab, which has larger eyes than the flounder, and a rough skin, whence it derives its name from lima, a file. The dab, being a cheap fish like the flounder, and much better flavoured, has a great sale in the London and Paris markets. There are no less than five different species occasionally ex posed for sale; the commonest of all is the P. limanda, and next P. microcephalus, town or lemon dab,' as it is commonly called at the fish-stalls.

Intermediate between the platesse (plaices) and rhombi (turbots) occurs the hippoglossus vulgaris, or holibut, also a northern

fish, more remarkable for size than goodness. Its dimensions are indeed whale-like; individuals have been captured nearly eight feet in length, four in breadth, and a span thick, and cut specimens of half the bulk are sometimes seen exposed at inferior fish-stalls in London. The holibut is held in no esteem by connoisseurs at home. Some disparage it exceedingly, calling it workhouse turbot;' but though thus stigmatized in England, the Greenlanders, according to Crantz, often subsist for a considerable period almost exclusively on its flesh, which they first cut into slips, and afterwards dry in the sun. The Norwegians and Icelanders largely

RHOMBUS,

occurs

This species was so well known to the ancients, that to cite all the passages where the name would be tedious, and might leave our readers with a fish surfeit, which we should be sorry to have on our conscience. It was held by the two rival representatives and exponents of the sense of civilized man of yore in as high culinary repute as it now is. Nihil ad rhombum-nothing to a turbot-was a Greek sentiment as well as a Roman proverb, and

Th' untasted turbot shows his tempting flank,

was no doubt either a poetic licence intended by Horace to be received with limitations, or at any rate a very uncommon event. The common Greek names for it were tra and ρομβος, as we read in Athenæus. The Romans call our ŋ77α rhombus, which is also a Greek name.' Archestratus, in the following line, uses the first word.

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salt and barrel it for home consump tion. As few fish when hooked offer a more determined resistance, plunge more furiously, or struggle longer for life than a full-sized holibut, the fishermen employ very strong tackle, and even then are often not a little put to it to haul him on board.

Having thus summarily disposed of the coarse northern fish, plaice, flounders, dabs, and holibut, with all of which the ancients were happily unacquainted, we come to three much more delicate flats, which are first on the carte, and enter con amore into a brief notice of those princely pleuronects-turbots, brills, and soles.

βόυγλωσσον.

inhabitants caught only the finest fish, ουχ ἡμεριους not such as you meet with daily in the market, but such as offered an acreage of body equal to that of the Isle of Crete. One of these they would place upon a lordly dish capable of holding a hundred as large. When it was the king's pleasure to have the fish prepared for table, the Sardians and Lycians, and Mygdonians, the Cranians, and the Paphians, began to vie with each other in felling timber to cook it. Then they piled up the forests they had cut down into a vast pyre in circuit equal to a city, and having let a lake into the caldron that was to seethe it, and carried for eight months in succession a hundred daily wagonsload of salt to season the pot, they kindled the crackling mass, and as it flamed up five galleys, every one of which carried its five banks of rowers complete, cruised round the margin of the caldron sea, and as it bubbled up from below, issued prompt directions to the crowd not to overboil the contents.

Was not this a dainty dish to set before a king?

We have to regret that the name of these whacking fish is not given by the historian, as it ought to have been. We can only conjecture, therefore, from the size, (somewhat exaggerated, no doubt,) and the trouble taken to prepare it properly, that the individual in question was a rhombus maximus of very large size! But whilst willing to admit that this is only hypothesis, we are not so willing to give up Domitian's rhombus, which all the world in our schoolboy days agreed to call turbot, and to debase the 'bellua peregrina' of Juvenal into a vulgar brill. There is no reason that we can see for reversing the opinion originally entertained respecting this particular fish in favour of the brill; and there are some objections to be made against it. In Juvenal's notice rhombus occur the words 'erectus in terga sudes.' Sudis (we write for unlearned ears) is literally a stake or rigid stick, and is so used

of his

in the Georgics of Virgil, and elsewhere passim, applied therefore by poetic licence to a fish, it must be to one with stiff fin rays, which bristle when erect, somewhat after the manner of stakes. Now, while this suits perfectly with the back-fin of the turbot, the rays of which are rigid, it does not accord in any way with that of the brill, one of whose distinctive characteristics (as separating it from the turbot) is to carry a soft back-fin, the rays of which split and divide into delicate threads at the top, as the reader may convince himself when next he passes a fishmonger's shop, where he will see both species (which are often confounded by young housekeepers) lying on the same slab, and inviting comparison. But besides this objection, as the ancients certainly had turbot as well as brill, and as the turbot of Ancona are still famed throughout throughout Italy, why suppose Domitian's Adriaco 'mirandus litore rhombus' was anything else? So much as regards this particular rhombus, for we do not mean to maintain that under the same designation both brill and turbot might not be included; how else, indeed, can we reconcile Galen and Xenocrates, the former of whom recommends plain boiled rhombus to invalids, as the flesh, he says, is soft; whilst the other declares the rhombus to be too firm a fish to consume fresh, and advises keeping it for some days to make it more tender? Here, whilst the Greek physician must necessarily mean brill, which is of a much softer fibre, the Deipnosophist philosopher is clearly speaking (eodem sub nomine) of turbot, which all the world knows is tough enough fresh, and is very much improved by keeping. In other cases we are inclined to believe that the brill had its distinctive appellation, and that the passer which Horace associates in the same line with rhombus, and which is certainly a pleuronect, may have been it. Heraldry is as careful as ichthyology to separate brill and turbot. Azure three bretts (or brills), naiant, are the arms of the family Bretcock;

and the crest of the family Britwesill is also a brill naiant, azure. Three turbots argent, finned or, belong to an ancient family, the Turbutts of Yorkshire, whose heraldic claims upon posterity are probably anterior to those of the Bretcocks or Britwesill.* As the best turbot were formerly peregrine' importations into ancient Rome, though the Mediterranean doubtless furnished a good many, so the chief supply brought to our markets at present come to us from abroad. The Dutch (those fishers for all the world, and not least so in their own interests) 'purvey' for London consumption alone eighty thousand rhombi, and to eat these as Nature always intended them to be eaten (though Apicius and Lucullus never found out the secret!) one million of Norway lobsters, for which we pay twenty-two to twenty-five thousands sterling a year, accompany these up the river alongside. Elian mentions a curious mode adopted in some places in his time for taking these and other flat fish, founded on a well-known peculiarity which they have to lie hid in the sand, like hares in their forms. The plan is very simple. A number of fishermen go at low water and walk over the

703

sand in sabots. As the water comes in and covers the bottom, the various pleuronects resort to the print-marks left by the fishermen, and it being shoal water, are easily seen and taken. The modern plan is very different, and is adapted for taking turbot of much larger dimensions. The fishermen of our northern coasts go out in parties of three in a boat called a cobble; each man carries two hundred and eighty hooks, attached at equal intervals on a long line, the united ends of which extend a league in length, and draws after it fifteen hundred and twenty baited hooks. These lines, as they are to lay across the current, can only be shot twice in twentyfour hours, when the rush of the waters slackens, as the tide is about to change. In place of the small cobble (which is but twenty feet long by five feet broad), the Dutch repair to the Dogger Bank in a boat twice that length, and three times as broad, carrying besides six fishermen, engaged in the craft, a cook as well, who no doubt has plentiful experience in dressing turbot. Here, as the fishing is continuous and the bank never fails to furnish supplies, the expedition is generally successful and the proceeds highly lucrative.

SOLES are distinguished from plaice by having no tubercles on the skin; from holibuts by the smallness of their teeth, which are confined to one jaw; from turbot by their eyes lying on the right in place of the left of the mouth (which is also twisted to one side) and by the comparative shortness of the dorsal fin. They have a very wide range, extending southward from the Scandinavian and Baltic seas, along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts into the Mediterranean. They are a frequent fish in America; abound and are of an excellent kind at the Cape of Good Hope; and, not to mention other foreign sites, are, as all the world knows, one of the best and commonest fish of the British seas, swarming along most of our sandy shores.

Though sea-fish by birth and right, they will not only live but thrive in fresh water, and like it so well as sometimes of their own accord to ascend rivers to a considerable height, and nestle for months in the slime at the bottom, during which time they grow apace; indeed, when some have been retained in fresh, and others of a like weight placed in salt water, the first, after a year's sojourn, have been known to acquire an increment of weight twice that of their saline cousins. With regard to the genesis of the sole, a strange statement, making large demands upon our credulity, has been advanced by an unbelieving Frenchman of note, who, having heard that these fish spring by natural birth from prawns, procured a supply, and keeping them in sea-water, ob