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. The average weight of a
full grown thunny, is from 1000 to 1200 pounds; of course the men with
poles who land him, can carry him but a little way, and he reaches the
market by relays. Every bit of him is eaten, except his bones and his
eyes, and even these yield a quantity of oil.

The spada, too, is pickled down to his bones--he is in great request for
the hotels, and his eyes, duly salted, are considered a sort of luxury;
in some places these are the perquisite of the f