Section 761

Spain and Portugal towards the British Channel, while the main bodies pass into the Mediteranean, follow the general current, and do not brealv into more scattered familias until thej' have swept round the shores of Pal- estine. Lists of species of the fish frequenting various parts of the Mediterranean may be found in Kisso {Ich- thyol. de Nice), who describes 315 species he had ob- served at Nice ; and in Adm. Smyth's Mediterranean, where in the chapter on Ichthyology lie gives a list of about 300 fishes haunting the waters of Sicily, besides 240 ci-ustacea, iestacea, and mollushs. Admiral Smyth remarks generally of the Mediterranean fish, that, "though mostly handsomer than British fishes, they are, for the most part, not to be compared with them in flavor" (p. 192-209). Professor E. Forbes (in his Re- •port on y-Egenn Invertehrata) divides that part of the East Mediterranean, in which for many j'ears he con- ducted his inquiries, into eight regions of dcj^th, each characterized by its peculiar fauna. " Certain spe- cies," he says, "in each are found in no other; several are found in one region which do not range into the next above, whilst they extend to that below, or vice versa. Certain species have their maximum of devel- opment in each zone, Ijeing most prolific in individuals at that zone in whicli is their maximum, and of which they m;iy be regarded as especiall}' characteristic. Mingled with these true natives are stragglers, owing their presence to the secondary influences wliich mod- ify distribution." The Syrian waters are probably not less prolific. The coasts of Tj're and Sidon would pro- duce at least as great a number. The name of the lat- ter place, indeed, is derived from the Phoenician word fish (see Gesenius, s. v. 'pT'^, Sidon: the modern name has the same meaning, Saida ; Abulfar. Syria, p. 93. See Sidon), and it is the oldest fishing establish- ment for commercial purposes known in history. The Hebrews had a less perfect acquaintance with the spe- cies found in the Red Sea, whither, to a certain extent, the majority of fishes found in the Indian Ocean re- sort. Besides these, in Egypt they had anciently eat- en those of the Nile (for the fish of the Nile, see Raw- linson's Herodotus, ii, 119-121, and, more fully, Wilkin- son's Ancient Egyj}iians, iii, 58; v, 248-254); subse- quently, those of the lake of Tiberias and of the rivers falling into the Jordan (Von Raumer, Paldstina, p. 105, after Hasselquist, mentions the Sparus Galilmts, a sort of bream, the silurus and mugil ; and Reuchlin, in Her- zng, after Dr. Earth, adds the Labrus Niloticus as inhab- iting this lake, which Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 875, represents as abounding in fish of all kinds [comp. John xxi, 11, with Matt, xiv, 17 and xv, 34]. From the earliest times — so said the Rabbinical legends — this lake had been so renowned in this respect [see Reland, p. 260, who quotes the Baba Bathra of the Bat)ylonian Gemara], that one of the ten fundamental laws laid down by Joshua was, that any one might fish with a hook in the Sea of Galilee [see Lightfoot, Talin. Exer- cit. on Matt, iv, 8]. Two of the villages on the banks derived their name from their fisheries, tlie west and the east Bethsaida, " house of fish" [compare the mod- ern name of Sidon just mentioned]. The numerous streams which flow into the Jordan arc also described by Stanley as full of fish, especially the Jabbok, p. 323) ; and the}^ may have been acquainted with spe- cies of other lakes, of tlie Orontes, and even of the Eu- phrates. The supph', however, of this article of food, which the Jewish people appear to have consumed largely, came chiefly from the Mediterranean. From Neh. xiii, 16, we learn that the Phoenicians of T3^re ac- tuallv resided in Jerusalem as dealers in fish, which must have led to an exchange of that commodity for corn and cattle. Thej' must have previously salted it (in which form it is termed IT^P^O in the Talmud; Lightfoot on Matt, xiv, 17) : the existence of a regular fish-market is implied in the notice of the fish-gate, which was probablv contiguous to it (2 Chron. xxxiii, III.— O o