De sollertia animalium

Now the fishermen, observing how that most fish avoided the casts of their hooks by cunning or by striving with the tackling, betook themselves to force,—as the Persians use to serve their enemies in their wars,[*](That is, by joining hands and sweeping across an island. See the description in Herod. VI. 31, and σαγηνεύω in Liddell and Scott. (G.))—

making use of nets, that there might be no escape for those that were caught either by the help of reason or subtlety. Thus mullets and the fish called julides are taken with sweep-nets and drag-nets, as are also several other sorts of fish called mormuri, sargi, gobii, and labraces; those that are called casting-nets catch the mullet, the gilthead, and the scorpion fish; and therefore Homer calls this sort of net πανάγρα, or the all-sweeper. [*](See Il. V. 487.) And yet there are some fish that are too cunning for these nets. Thus the labrax, perceiving the drawing of the sweep-net, with the force of his body beats a hollow place in the mud, where he lays himself close till the net be gone over him. But as for the dolphin, when he finds himself taken and in the midst of the net, he remains there without being in the least perplexed, but falls to with a great deal of joy, and feasts upon the numerous fry within the meshes; but so soon as he comes near the shore, he bites his way through the net with his teeth and swims away. Or if he chance to be taken, the fishermen do him no other harm the first time, but only sew a sort of large bulrush to the finny crown upon his head, and so let him go. If they take him a second time, they punish him with stripes, well knowing him again by the prints of the needle. But that rarely happens. For having got pardon the first time, for the most part of them, they acknowledge the favor, and abstain from spoil for the future.

Moreover, among the many examples that make evident the wariness of fish in avoiding the deceits and craft of the fishermen, it would not be convenient to pass by that of the cuttle-fish. For this fish, carrying near his neck at certain black and inky sort of liquor, so soon as he perceives himself discovered, throws that liquor forth, and darkens all the water round about him in such a manner

makes his escape; imitating therein Homer’s Deities, who, when they had a mind to save any of their heroes, hid them in an azure cloud. But of this enough.