We should have mentioned a singular practice of the fishermen of the present day in Sicily, to _pat_ the thunny while he is in the net, as you pat a horse or dog: They say it makes him docile. This done, they put their legs across his back, and _ride_ him round the net room, an experiment few would practise on the dolphin's back, at least in these days; yet Aulus Gellius relates that there was a dolphin who used to delight in carrying children on his back through the water, swimming out to sea with them, and then putting them safe on shore! Now, _but for the coins_, taking the above custom into consideration, one might have supposed the ancients' _delphinus_ to have been the modern _thunny_.
"Dragged through the mire, and bleeding from the hock," lay a continuous mass of slaughtered thunny, mouths wide open, bloody sockets, from which the eyes had been torn to make lamp-oil, gills ripped off to be eaten fresh, and roes in baskets by their sides. There was also a quantity of a fish of dirty white belly and dusky back, the _alalonga_, and two huge _dolphins_, with skins full of lamp-oil. This really ugly creature looks far better in the _delphin_ title-pages, with his lamp and his "_alere flammam_" on clean paper, than on the stall; but his very best appearance is on a fine Sicilian coin, with _Arion on his back_. The snouts of four large sword-fish were also conspicuous; and there was thunny enough for all the world: some of the supply, however, was to be hawked about the streets, in order to which cords are placed under the belly of a thunny of fifteen cwt., and off he goes slung on a pole, with a drummer before and a drummer behind, to disturb every street and alley in Palermo till he is got rid of; not that the stationary market is quiet; for the noise made in selling the mutest of all animals is in all countries really remarkable; but who shall do justice to a _Sicilian_ Billingsgate at _mezzogiorno_! "_Trenta sei, trenta sei_," bawls out the Padrone, cleaving a fish in twain with one stroke of an immense chopper kept for the purpose. "_Trenta sei, trenta sei_," repeat the two journeymen accomplices, one counting it on his fingers to secure accuracy and telegraph the information to distant purchasers, or such as cannot _hear_ in the noise; another holds up a slice as a specimen; three fellows at our elbow are roaring "_tutti vivi, tutta vivi_," "_a sedici, a sedici_." The man of _whitings_, and even he of _sardines_, have a voice and a figure of their own. As you approach each stall, the noisy salesmen suspend their voices, and enquire, in gentler accents, if you intend to buy; if you do not, like the cicada their stunning sound returns as soon as you are past. We have hinted that the thunny, "_Integer et cadavere toto_," does not look handsome: vastly less attractive is he when mutilated. Big as an elephant's thigh, and with flesh like some black-blooded bullock of ocean breed, his unsavoury meat attracts a most repulsive assemblage, not only of customers, but of flies and wasps, which no flapping will keep off from his grumous liver. The _sword-fish_ cuts up into large bloodless slices, which look on the stall like so many fillets of very white veal, and might pass for such, but that the head and shoulders are fixed upon a long lance, high above the stall, to inform the uninitiated that the delicate looking meat in question was fed in the pastures of the deep. The _price_ of thunny, a staple commodity and object of extensive Sicilian commerce, varies considerably with the supply; as to the demand, it never ceases. During our stay in Palermo, a whole fish would fetch about eight _scudi_, and his retail price was about twopence _per English pound_. Think of paying three or four _francs_ for less than half a pound _sott 'olio_ in Paris. The supply seems very constant during the season, which, on the Palermo side of the island, is from May to July, and continues a month later along the _Messina_ coast; after which, as the fish cease to be seen, it is presumed here that they have sailed to the African coast. The flesh of the _spada_ fish is generally double in market price to that of the thunny, selling during the greater part of June at about fourpence a-pound. Every thunny is weighed upon landing, and a high tax paid upon it to the king, who, in consideration thereof, charges his Sicilian subjects no duty for gunpowder or salt. The fixed fisheries for thunny, round the Sicilian coast, are upwards of a dozen, the most famous being that of Messina. At Palermo, however, they sometimes take an immense strike of several hundred in one expedition.