e, 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_.

THE FISH MARKET.

"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,